


here be dragons

by LadyCharity



Series: there and back again [3]
Category: 1917 (Movie 2019), Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: F/M, Family, Gen, Parent-Child Relationship, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Will Schofield is the father of Tommy from Dunkirk, World War II, now TWO boys have PTSD, there are probably a number of tolkien references peppered in here that need crediting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:55:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 49,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23145802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyCharity/pseuds/LadyCharity
Summary: “Bad dream?” his daughter asks.William sighs; he neither nods nor shakes his head.“Was it about the war again?”“What?” says William chidingly. “Do you think the only thing in my head is the war?”She doesn’t laugh. William sobers and draws in a deep breath.“Yes,” he says. “It was.”-As a second World War rages on and threatens his family, Will Schofield is still wrestling with the first one.
Relationships: William Schofield & His Children, William Schofield/Original Female Character(s)
Series: there and back again [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1650028
Comments: 91
Kudos: 57





	1. one for my cot and one for my casket

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry I just....I just can't stop writing for this family. Especially when the children in particular have been living in my head for a good six months now. What was meant to be a small addition to this series, reflecting Will and his family's time in the home front through WWII, has weirdly become a multi-chapter story?? I didn't want it to be but then I looked at my page count and found that I was already on page 10 and only 1/4th of the way through what I wanted. I also get very nervous about posting multi-chaptered work before I actually finish writing said work, because I ALWAYS end up going back to change something and with multi-chapter work that can be tricky, so this is a heck of a risk. 
> 
> This is part of a series of stories, beginning with 'you'd make a mess, a terrible mess out of the war' that imagines Will Schofield of '1917' to be the father of Tommy from 'Dunkirk.' I'd highly recommend reading at least that story in order to understand this odyssey of self-indulgence. Timeline wise, this probably actually should go second in the series, despite it being the 4th one published. Chronological order? I don't know her. 
> 
> I also can't guarantee that this will even be the last I will write of this series.....you can thank Waffles Risa for feeding me a very delectable (AND CRUSHING) idea that maaaybe I'll write after this installment.
> 
> Thank you to anyone who has read this story and the other stories in the series. I really, really appreciate you and enjoy sharing in this fandom with you. Special thanks to Waffles Risa and scientistsinistral for being such lovely new friends through this fandom and engaging with me as I come up with ideas about this little universe.

William wakes up startled, but that isn’t new. Any little thing wakes him up--the creaking of the roof, his wife turning on the bed in her sleep, a familiar face in his dreams that he hadn’t expected to see. 

Tonight, he had dreamt of the man he had strangled to death in Ecoust. At least, William thinks it had been that man--his face is now a mask made of William’s imagination more than memory, but it does not make a difference. His mind knew without a shadow of a doubt that the man that William was pressing both hands--yes, both of them--down onto a German’s throat, that it was the same man he killed years ago. He had woken with a whimper, the stain of guilt so heavy that he can still feel it in his left hand that he no longer has. 

Normally, he will lie still under his sheets, let his mind wander where it will even if it is into a minefield, because he is too tired to change its path, before eventually nodding off again. On the nights that he can’t fall back asleep--and that does happen every now and then--he will carefully leave the bed as to not disturb Eloise and slip into his son’s empty room. He will curl up on the neatly made covers and convince himself that his son’s scent is still in the pillow. Tonight is one of those nights.

He hauls himself out of the bed, his joints groaning from insomnia. He throws a dressing gown over his shoulders and shuffles out of the bedroom and down the hall. What he isn’t expecting is that the girls’ bedroom door is left open, and there is a light shining from underneath Tommy’s bedroom door. 

William knows better, but his heart tricks itself into believing that he is a young father again, and his daughters have snuck into Tommy’s room to prank him and play card games. His mind knows that his eldest daughter and his son are not here, that the war has taken them far away from him, but his heart is convinced in a momentary skip that he has never let them go. 

He presses a hand against the door. He hears shuffling and sniffling behind the door. It could only be his middle child, Ginnie. A part of him hesitates, and thinks that he ought to pretend he hasn’t heard her and return to the bedroom. He imagines that she does not want to see him right now, at this late hour. But that is his daughter on the other side, a grown woman now but his baby girl nonetheless, and when he hears her sleepless at night he instinctively wants to bolt through the door and wrestle off whatever it is that makes her cry. Press his hand against its throat until it chokes, even. 

He knocks, waits a beat, and opens the door. The lamp on Tommy’s desk is turned on, and some of his recent favourites are still stacked under the light-- _The Hobbit_ and _The Sword and the Stone_ , to name a few. There is a lump under Tommy’s blankets, and the lump is William’s daughter. She freezes at the sound of William opening the door, as if he might not notice her if she stays still. He sits down at the edge of the bed, feeling the tip of her feet under the blanket, and doesn’t say anything at first. 

They stay quiet, father and daughter, out of place in this bedroom. Finally, William puts a hand on Ginnie’s ankle.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” he says. 

The lump moves its head. 

“I can’t tell if that’s a nod or a shake.” 

“No thank you,” is the muffled response.

William feels a surge of nostalgia. Ginnie is in her twenties now, but she seems eight again, sullen because Edith is cross with her for spilling one of her secrets to their peers. He runs a thumb over her ankle, treasuring the bump of bone underneath the blankets. 

Ginnie pulls the sheet from her head and stares at her father--doesn’t say anything at first, simply watches him tiredly. Her gaze is piercing, the colour of the earth and just as grounding. William averts his gaze to the dog-eared copy of _The Hobbit_ \--an eighteenth birthday gift from the girls to Tommy, before the conscription took him away. William wonders if Tommy ever had the chance to finish it, or if he is still waiting to find out if the dwarves ever make it to the Misty Mountains. 

“Bad dream?” Ginnie says.

William sighs; he neither nods nor shakes his head, but Ginnie doesn’t need his affirmation to know the truth. She lays her head on Tommy’s pillow, rumpling the pillowcase and tricking William into thinking this bed has been used not too long ago. 

“Was it about the war again?” she asks. 

“What?” says William chidingly. “Do you think the only thing in my head is the war?” 

Ginnie doesn’t laugh. William sobers and draws in a deep breath. 

“Yes,” he says. “It was.” 

There are moments when he regrets telling his children anything about the war, and about Tom Blake. Not because he thinks they cannot handle it, because they had taken everything magnificently in stride for they did not understand any of it, or at least not at the time. But because _he_ cannot handle it--it is torturous to be vulnerable, for the ones he is meant to protect to know that he is terrified and brokenhearted. 

“But it’s all right,” William says. “I’m awake now, and now that I’m out of the dream I don’t even remember what I was afraid of.” 

His typically chatty daughter says nothing. He squeezes her ankle as if that will convince her. 

“What about you?” he says. “Why are you here?” 

“I woke up from a dream too,” she says.

“But why are you in here?” he says. 

Now she is the one squirming under her father’s clear gaze. She runs a tired hand through her curly hair. 

“Strange dream,” she says. “That’s all.”

“Try me,” says William. 

She says nothing for the longest time, until loneliness overwhelms her. 

“For some reason, I was sewing pillowcases for the war effort,” she says. “And I was rushing because I couldn’t get enough out on time. And then all of a sudden, Tommy was there, and he was asking me to make him some really quickly.” She fixes her gaze on a sketch of the meadows that Tommy pinned to the edge of his desk. “I told him to give me a minute and I’ll make him one, and he told me, no, Ginnie, I’ll need two. One for my cot and one for my casket.”

Her voice splinters. She wishes belatedly she hasn’t said anything, afraid that it would add worry to William, but that is nothing to worry about. William is already thinking of this constantly, the dread that Tommy is dead in this very moment. This only gives him a reason to finally acknowledge it. 

“Mrs Moore had told me that she had a dream where Lee was blowing her a kiss from his Spitfire before she got her telegram,” Ginnie says casually, as if none of this is related. 

William’s heart twists at the mention of their friend’s fallen son. He leans closer over Ginnie, as if he is tucking her into bed and assuring her that there are no monsters in the wardrobe. 

“Your fears are slipping into your sleep, love,” he says. “Dreams don’t mean anything.”

“They meant a lot to Nebudchanezzar,” Ginnie says. 

William doesn’t have any comforting contradictions to say to that. He sighs. 

“That’s true,” he says. “They did.” A beat. “But that isn’t Tommy’s style. If he were to say goodbye, he would have done it properly.”

Ginnie purses her lips, but she does not dismiss this. 

“Right,” she says. “He would at least kiss Mum on the cheek before he went.”

“Exactly,” he says. “Squeeze your hand to say goodbye.”

“Tell us not to worry,” she says. “He’ll go ahead first to say hi to Granddad before the rest of us. Or,” she adds, a smile twitching at the corner of her lips, “he will do like he does at social gatherings—pretend he is going to check on the kitchen when really he’s buggered off into a wardrobe for an hour.”

”Oh no,” William says with a groan. “He would.”

“Remember when he desperately wanted to leave Aunt Millicent’s birthday tea so he crawled out the kitchen window to play the knights of the Round Table with Edmund Peterson and Adam Samuels?”

"You're right," William says, massaging the bridge of his nose. "Dear God, he was properly fourteen years old."

“ _That’ll_ be how he snuffs it,” Ginnie says. “He’s had his fill of social interaction and would like to find a quiet place to die, if you please.”

William snorts, and realises that she has finally inherited his trench humour. 

“So there you go,” he says. “If Lee Moore of all the boys would fly all the way to kiss his mother before he died, Tommy would do more than ask you to prepare his grave.”

Ginnie smiles wryly. It isn’t much comfort, speculating how Tommy would leave this world, but it’s enough for now. Anything more would be dishonest. William holds out a hand to Ginnie, and she takes it. She’s the only child he can father for now, and he doesn’t take it for granted. 

“Go back to bed, Ginnie,” he says. “It’s your turn to open the pub for lunch today anyway.”

Ginnie rolls her eyes but she slides out of Tommy’s bed. 

“Hold on,” William says, but Ginnie has already pulled the quilts back into place. 

“What?” she says. 

She smooths the blankets and the pillow, so that they return to their undisturbed, empty state. William shakes his head, realising how foolish he is being. 

“Nothing,” he says. “Good night, darling.”

“Night, Dad.” 

Father and daughter return to their bedrooms and shut their doors behind them. William hugs his pillow against his face, thinking too much and sleeping not at all. On the other side of the wall, Ginnie follows suit. 

-

William does not know where his daughters’ strength comes from. It certainly did not come from him. 

Tommy abruptly stops writing in the spring, and his eldest daughter Edith is missing their phone calls because she works late at the prime minister’s cabinet—when she does speak with them, she avoids their pointed questions of if she knows what is happening in France, how are the boys faring and why does the news look so bleak. Ginnie would write down all her questions beforehand on a scrap of paper, rewriting and rewording them in hopes that it would trip Edith up and spill a confession, but Edith has been playing this game of wits with her sister since she was born and deftly dodges all of them. 

“Of course you would be the one to trick me to commit treason,” Edith says to Ginnie. 

“It’s not treason,” Ginnie argues. “It’s our brother.”

“I know,” Edith says, and her voice becomes heavy. “It’s everyone’s brothers. I can’t say anything, Ginnie.”

Her sister’s steadfast silence does not deter Ginnie, who continues to badger and bargain Edith for military secrets. William gently wrestles the telephone from Ginnie’s hand and asks her to help with the orders at the bar—she reluctantly leaves the back room where the telephone is, and William catches a moment with his firstborn. 

“Hello, sweetheart,” he says. “I won’t persuade anything of you, I promise.”

“Good,” Edith says. Her voice is tired. “She is going to break me one day, but the minute you ask I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to help it.”

William doesn’t know what to respond with, because he is tempted to test her. He doesn’t know where his son is, and he cannot comfort his wife when she stands at Tommy’s bedroom doorway and trembles without a word. The only thing keeping them afloat is the lack of a telegram. 

“Just tell me if you know,” William says. “If you know he’s—“

He cannot finish the sentence. He can still hear Wendy Moore’s scream of despair when she received the telegram of her son’s death, two doors down. If William is to ever receive such news, he cannot imagine what noise he will make. 

“I will, Papa,” Edith says in a small voice that tells William that she will not, and he can’t blame her for it. 

Edith keeps her duty and tells her family nothing that she hears behind the closed doors of the cabinet who sends everyone’s sons into fire. She doesn’t need to. Late May, the Archbishop of Canterbury suddenly calls for the churches across England to pray for the soldiers in France, and the Church of St Laurence heeds the call. All of Great Britain still knows nothing, except that something terrible is happening in France, and their boys face doom. 

The realisation sends William to his knees before he even makes it to the church. He knows what Tommy faces, so his nightmares are specific—he can’t stop himself from imagining Tommy shredded by shrapnel, skull shot through by a bullet in the eye, drowning in mud. Tommy calling out a word of warning to his fellow soldiers only to be pinned to the ground and strangled to death. 

A hand grips his shoulder. He grabs it without looking up and can feel that it is Eloise’s. 

“Let’s go, Will,” she says. “Come on. Shoes on.”

William tries to say something, but cannot make a sound. Fear paralyzes him, love for his son makes him paraplegic. Eloise shakes him a little. 

“They’re trapped, aren’t they?” William says. He grips Eloise’s hand tightly. “They’re losing.”

“I don’t know,” Eloise says. Her nails dig into his shoulder. “But it could be true.”

William moans as if he is sick and in pain. 

“He can’t get home,” he says. His voice breaks. “Tommy can’t get home. France is so far away.”

“It is,” Eloise says. She wipes her eyes quickly with her sleeve. “But you’re getting on your feet and you’re coming with me, Will. You _will not_ stay here in despair. We can’t do anything to help Tommy but pray and that is what we are going to do. Ginnie, fetch your father’s shoes.”

William nods shakily. Ginnie helps him with his shoes and they lock the pub door behind them. The streets leading to St Laurence flow steadily with people—their faces pale and stricken with the threat of defeat and invasion. William needs to pray simply to move forward as despair threatens to poison him. On the way there he spots Wendy Moore’s face amongst the crowd—a shade of who she once was and she marches forward anyway, nothing left to lose. 

The candles at the church never go out, but since the beginning of the war they overflow with trembling light and threads of white wax. Rows and rows of pale votive candles rise and sink through time, their melted wax spilling onto the racks and hardening in mid-fall. The diminished candles would be replaced by another, and another, until the candle rack looked like a waterfall of fossilized prayers. 

Ginnie lights a candle on behalf of the family for Tommy’s sake. William kneels in the pews alongside the entire town of Reading. He cannot clasp his hands, and it is the first time in nearly thirty years that he dreads this. He is seized with dread that if he does not pray with eloquent enough words, if his face is not bowed deeply enough, if he does not plead hard enough, then he will lose his son. 

The Book of Common Prayer trembles in his hand, and when he opens it on accident to the Burial Rites, his heart clenches in terror of the gift of prophecy. One for my cot and one for my casket, Tommy told Ginnie in a dream, and William begs God in a way that he has never done before, not even when he was in the Somme. 

The priest’s voice sweeps over them as he leads them all in prayer--his voice rings through the unusually still room, and the wave of murmured response from the parish flows forward like the sound of the ocean sifting across the shore. William imagines the hushed voices to be the rippling English channel that separates him from his youngest child, parting down the middle so that the stranded army could flee home. 

All of their heads are bowed, but William catches sight of Ginnie from the corner of his eye. She keeps her chin up and her eyes fixed on the altar in the front of the room rather than closed or upon the pages of the Book of Common Prayer. Her hands are bunched into fists on her lap, and she locks eyes with the altar as she prays, as if to dare God to make the first move. Sweat glistens on her forehead, and her fingernails dig into her skirt, but she does not look away from the cross, even while she grits her teeth. 

“Not my will,” Eloise whispers, her breath mingling with the silvery candle smoke with unimaginable honesty, “but Thy will be done.”

Ginnie draws in a deep breath--William can see the way her chest swells and instinctively braces himself for her scream, but she does nothing of that sort. Without taking her eyes away, without stopping for breath as she joins the parish, his daughter threatens God whilst on her knees. No, says her burning, coal-dark gaze. You must protect them, God. That must be Your will. I cannot pray for anything else.

William looks down to his own sweating and trembling hand as images of Tommy being shot at, terrified and running for his life, plagues his mind. He closes his eyes, trying to submit to God, trying to boldly demand of Him, and finding that he can do neither. My son, my son, his heart cries, and that will have to be enough. 

-

The phone in the pub rings in the early hours of the morning. Ginnie races out of the flat and practically leaps down the entire flight of stairs to get to the phone. When she swipes it off of the receiver, it is Edith.

“I’ll find out as much as I can,” is all Edith says, breathless with the adrenaline of staying up all night at work, fingers stiff and pulse pounding with secrets. Before Ginnie can demand what Edith means, Edith hastily ends the call. 

“It could be good news or bad news,” Ginnie says as she shovels porridge into her mouth. “It could be news or no news at all. For all we know it could be about Tommy or it could be about the Prime Minister getting his nose hairs pulled out--”

“ _Ginnie_ ,” Eloise says. 

“--And we just have to sit here and wait for whatever it is!” Ginnie fumes. “She’s got a flair for dramatics, that one.”

William thinks that that is rather rich coming from the daughter whose response to being scolded for getting dirt under her fingernails was to lead her classmates on a coup against the teacher. 

“I know it’s frustrating,” William says, “but please understand the situation that she is in. She knows a lot of things about the war that if the enemy taps into our communication or has spies--”

“What does she think I’m going to do?” Ginnie says. “Broadcast Tommy’s whereabouts on the BBC? Shout it across the channel for the Germans to hear? What do the Germans care about where Tommy is, _we_ do.” 

“You won’t do anything,” William says. “Of course you won’t leak military secrets, Ginnie, it’s the question of if it ends up in someone else’s hand while it’s being passed on to you.” 

Ginnie crosses her arms so tightly that it would likely take hours to untangle her.

“She gets to know everything,” she says crossly, as if they are talking about gifts from Father Christmas. “And we have to wait until God knows when--”

“Virginia Charlotte, this is about the safety the entire BEF,” William says sharply. “Not just Tommy.” 

Ginnie’s face reddens. She mutters a cursory acknowledgement before shoving her bowl under the tap and sweeping downstairs to set up the pub without another look in William’s eye. William exchanges a look with Eloise, who shrugs a shoulder as she squeezes the last colour of tea out of the thin teabags they still have left. 

“She just needs to vent, that one,” Eloise says. She pushes the cuppa over to William. “She knows that you’re right.” 

“Certainly doesn’t show it,” William says under his breath. 

He takes the cuppa with thanks. Eloise sits down at the table next to him, hands fidgeting with the tea cozy. 

“Are you worried?” Eloise says.

“Of course I’m bloody worried,” William says. “And I don’t even have the luxury to be angry because I know that all the secrets and lies are necessary. What an enemy is capable of when they have information--” 

He shakes his head and takes a measured sip of his meagre tea. Eloise nibbles at her toast, her brow creased, and William wishes that he could say something comforting to her that isn’t naive. 

“Edith knows,” William says. He clumsily takes Eloise’s hand and squeezes it. “She knows what’s happening to Tommy. She’ll know exactly what to pray for.” 

“I don’t even know which is harder,” Eloise says. "To know nothing or to know too much." 

There is the sound of bounding footsteps up the stairs to the flat when the door swings open. Ginnie takes three strides to enter the kitchen, and by then she has already shouted a flurry of words.

“They’ve gotten the boys out!” Ginnie says. She slams the newspaper down on the table, upsetting William’s tea. “Look right here, they’ve evacuated the boys, they’ve gotten out of France, three hundred thousand of them!” 

Eloise swipes the paper from the table. She gets up abruptly from her seat to read the newspaper in the kitchen window light. Ginnie keeps talking, but it is as if William has lost his sense of hearing as he holds his breath, waiting for his wife to turn around. Tommy is one boy--William prays that he is one out of three hundred thousand. 

“That’s what Edith is going to find out, isn’t it?” Ginnie says. “If Tommy had gotten off the beach or--”

She stops short when William puts a hand on her elbow. Eloise’s shoulders are still hunched. It is impossibly miraculous news for the country, but they still have no idea if it is one for their family. 

Eloise turns back to her husband and daughter, her face flushed. She holds the newspaper close to her chest.

“Oh, my baby,” she whispers. “He must have been so frightened.” 

With shaking hands she passes the newspaper to William. William hastily scans the article, his heart clenching with each of the journalist’s description of the boys being outgunned and surrounded, Luftwaffe flying over their heads, and the exhausted, shaken state of those who make it back to England’s shore. But they’re alive, and there is still this sliver of a chance that Tommy is among them. 

William gets off of his seat and draws his two women close to him, kissing his wife and daughter on the head. Eloise buries her head in his shoulder, and Ginnie grips him tightly. 

“Come on,” he murmurs into Ginnie’s hair. “Back to work. There will be plenty of fathers raising a pint tonight.” 

-

When the phone rings again. Ginnie trips over a barstool just to reach it, but makes it in time. 

“Tommy’s back,” Edith announces feverishly. “He reached Weymouth with some of the last boats. He’s home.” 

Ginnie wastes no time telling William and Eloise. Eloise sobs with relief, and William treats everyone in the pub with a round on the house that night. Great Britain is probably on the verge of a terrible invasion, and their friends on the other side of the channel have fallen, but Reading’s sons live for another day, and that is more than anyone can ask for.

Some of Reading’s sons, that is. After the boys who return are accounted for, those who have not returned are noted as well, and the telegrams make their way into mothers’ hands. Israel rejoices while Egypt wails for their firstborns--William notices certain familiar faces who suddenly stop coming to the pub as they toast little ships through the night. 

Edith calls one evening. She speaks in whispers, as if she is out of breath.

“Sweetheart, you sound exhausted,” William says. 

“Long days,” she says. “I’m all right, though. I’ve started sleeping in the office.”

“What about the men?” 

“They have a room just for the women, Papa, don’t worry. And I don’t do it every night.” A beat. “The boys are going on a leave soon.”

“I read that in the papers,” William said, his pulse spiking. He had tried not to hope, not to assume, but he knew how his daughter was being torn in many directions from work, and couldn’t wait on every question that her family would ask. “Is Tommy--will he go on leave as well?”

“Yes,” Edith says carefully. “He wrote to me--said he wanted to visit me in London.” 

“I see,” says William.

“He only has two day,” Edith says quickly. “And it’s easier to get to the depot from King’s Cross than it is from Reading, and he’s never been to the city as well so I thought it would be nice to let him explore, and--”

“Of course,” William cuts in. “I understand. Do you think--do you think he would want us to come down to see him?”

Edith hesitates, and William prepares himself for the answer.

“He didn’t say,” she says. “I mean, I hadn’t asked, I hadn’t thought of--I don’t have much room, but we could find perhaps a hotel or maybe set you up with the cousins, I’m sure they have room, but--”

“He sounded tired, didn’t he?” William says. “In his letter.”

A moment of silence. William sits down at the desk on which the telephone is set. 

“Edith,” William says evenly. “I absolutely understand.” 

Edith lets out a long-held breath. William was honest, but he feels crestfallen nonetheless. He wishes that he does not understand, because now he can only guess how crushed Tommy must feel--if Tommy now believes that he probably won’t come home again. That his child thinks that he will die is a blow that William is not prepared for. 

“I think it’d be okay if one of you visited us, though,” Edith says. “My landlady’s two grandchildren have been sent out of the city, so I asked her if I could rent that room for the weekend--there are two beds, Tommy and I can take those and someone can take mine.” 

“I’d like to send your mother to see you two,” William says. He wishes more than anything he can see his son, but he cannot take that opportunity away from Eloise. “When will he be coming?”

“This Friday,” Edith says. “I can meet her at Paddington. It isn’t far from where I work.”

“That’ll do,” William says. “Edith--give him all of our love. Please.” 

“You needn’t tell me twice, Papa,” Edith says. “I ought to go. I promised to finish a report before I leave today.” 

“Get enough sleep, Edith,” William blurts out. “And make sure you’re not skipping meals.”

“I’m doing my best,” Edith says.

“Try not to walk home alone when the sun’s down.”

“I’ve got it under control, Papa.” 

“I’ll have Mum bring you some food, so that you don’t have to worry about groceries.” 

“Don’t, it’ll just go bad. I am eating,” she adds hastily when William opens his mouth. “But I haven’t needed to cook. The men have been taking me out to eat.”

“Who? Sorry?” 

“Purely economic,” Edith says hastily. “Good night, Papa.” 

She ends the call immediately. William rubs his tired temples. In the midst of a war and colossal military disasters, he still has to worry about his daughter wrapping resourceful men around her little finger. 

When they close the pub for the night, Ginnie cleans the glasses while William wipes up the tables. Eloise finishes up the books for the night. William has spent the rest of the evening trying to piece together the words into a proper announcement. He can only brace himself for Ginnie’s inevitable protests. 

“Dad,” Ginnie says.

“Yes, darling?” William says.

Ginnie takes in a deep breath.

“Is it all right if I take Tuesday and Thursday evenings off?” she says. 

William looks up, surprised. This is not the conversation he had expected tonight. 

“Every Tuesday and Thursday?” he says. 

“Yes, sir,” says Ginnie. Her gaze flits distractedly over the bottles. “I can still work in the afternoons, and I should be back to help close and clean up.” 

“Thursday nights can get a bit busy,” William says slowly. “Does it have to be that day?”

Ginnie guiltily shifts her weight from one foot to the other. 

“Yes,” she says. “Afraid so.”

William exchanges a glance with Eloise, who shrugs with confusion. 

“What are you planning, Ginnie?” he says.

“Nothing,” Ginnie says. “Just--wanted to work on something new, that’s all.” 

Her cheeks redden. William knows that Ginnie has her rights to her business, but considering how apparently Edith may or may not be flirting in order to get free meals he doesn’t feel incredibly assured anymore.

“If it’s important to you, I can help on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” Eloise says. 

“Oh, Mum, thank you--”

“As long as you take over for me Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons,” Eloise adds. “So I can work at the People’s Pantry. You can’t get off entirely scotch free.”

“Of course,” Ginnie says quickly. “Will do. Thank you, Mum, really.” 

Mum nods and shoots William a glance, who concedes. He has, at this point, gotten used to working quickly with only one hand, but he feels much more confident if there is at least one other able-bodied person helping him in the pub. 

The three of them descend into silence again, busying themselves with the cleanup. It is then when William decides to break some news of his own. 

“Tommy will be on leave this weekend,” he says.

Ginnie freezes in mid-wipe of a glass. Through the open door of the back room, Eloise looks up from her maths immediately. 

“What?” Ginnie says.

“Edith called me earlier,” he says. “He will be on leave for just a weekend, before going back to training.”

“Why didn’t you say something earlier?” Eloise says, standing from her chair. “I need to clean his sheets, and go to the shop--”

“He’ll go to London,” William says. “To see Edith. And then he has to go back out again. It’s a very short time.” 

Eloise’s lips part in confusion. Ginnie swallows audibly. Before she can ask the question, William regretfully answers it first.

“We’d only be able to send one other person to meet them,” William says. “Any more and--it’d be too much for Tommy.” 

“Too much?” Ginnie says. “But--”

She stops herself. The rag bunches in her hand. Her dark brow furrows, but then she turns to Eloise.

“I’ll pack your bag for you if you want to get anything from the shops for him, Mum,” she says. 

William is hit with an overwhelming sense of pride for his daughter. He knows how desperate she is for her siblings. It makes his nose sting. Eloise nods, but there is a far-off look in her eyes that concerns William, as if she is barely hearing what anyone says. 

“That’ll be good,” William says softly. “Thank you, Ginnie.” 

Ginnie purses her lips and says nothing. She takes stock of the liquor in the shelf so that her back is turned to her parents, so that they would be spared her disappointment. William’s heart bursts with gratefulness. Eloise wanders back to the back room to finish the books, walking like a somnambulist in the musky light. 

When Ginnie returns upstairs, William quietly knocks on the door of the back room. Eloise calls for him to come in, and he shuts the door behind him. 

“Nearly finished?” he says.

“I’ve still got a couple more rounds to go,” Eloise says. “I keep losing my place.”

“Oopsies,” William says, dragging the book away from her. 

“William Schofield, do you want to go to bed at a reasonable hour or not?” 

“What, you aren’t clever enough to finish this within the quarter of an hour?”

“I meant that I will lock you in this room and take the bed for myself, husband of mine.”

William snorts loudly. 

“Go to bed, Eloise,” he says. “I’ll finish up the maths. You look like you’ve forgotten what planet you live on.” 

“Taking one look at you, it’s hard to tell if I’m among aliens or not. Give me that notebook.” 

William tuts but he hands her back the notebook. Eloise flips it to the correct page and continues scratching out the receipts of payment for the day.

“You don’t think Ginnie’s in trouble with a loan shark, do you?” William says. 

“That’s a new one,” Eloise says. “I was starting to wonder if she might be joining a cult. Why a loan shark?”

“Because I saw her take her pay straight away to spend it,” William says. “Wait, why a cult?”

Eloise shrugs.

“Cults have regular meetings, I would think,” she says. “Well, let’s hope we’re both off.”

“Hopefully,” William echoes. A beat. “You don’t think it’s a boy, do you?”

“Ginnie’s terrorised every boy left in the city,” Eloise says. “The ones who could stand her have already gone off to the army because they have what it takes.”

She curses under her breath as she miscalculates another equation. 

“Give that over,” William says, holding out his hand. 

“I’m doing just fine,” Eloise says. “I’m just--I’m thinking.” 

“Thinking about what?” 

Eloise puts down her pen. Her face sobers.

“I’ve been thinking,” she says. “I think you should go see Tommy.”

“What?” he says. 

She turns to look him full-on, her face resolute. Her dark hair is streaked with grey, piled up, curls drooping in the summer heat, but she is wide awake compared to half an hour ago, dark eyes resolute. 

“I think you should go to London,” she says. “And see Tommy.”

William’s heart skips a beat. He shakes his head vigorously.

“No,” he says. “I shouldn’t. He needs his mother, Eloise.”

“He needs to have proof that he will make it home,” Eloise says. “That he will come back from all of this. He needs _you_ , Will.” 

William feels numb. Eloise closes the books on the table, anything to keep her nervous hands busy. 

“Am I proof?” he croaks.

“Aren’t you here?” she says. “With us, now?” 

William stills. He looks down at his wife--brave, fiery, practical Eloise, whom he once dreaded to come near in the middle of the war like she was a plague. He doesn’t want to remember those days and those feelings. They had brought him shame and guilt, and yet he could not loose them from his chest, and so he would bury it deeper and deeper in hopes that it could never be found again, that the dearest ones in his life would never know that he didn’t want to see them. She sees him as a brave role model, from whom their son could draw strength. He knows the truth--that he doesn’t blame Tommy for staying away to protect his heart and theirs, because he hated coming home.

When William does not speak, Eloise looks down at her lap. 

“I had known, you know,” she says quietly. “That you didn’t want to be here. When you were on furlough, during our war. I knew that you didn’t want to come back.”

“Eloise--” William says, his mouth dry. He never imagined that he would have to come face to face again with those past thoughts, now that he is face to face with his wife. 

“Please,” Eloise says. “Let me finish. I’m like our daughter. I just--I just need to confess, a little.” 

She draws in a deep breath. He can only imagine that she has held this to her chest alone for a long time. 

“I knew from the way you were afraid to touch me,” she says. “The way you flinched when the girls hugged you. And when they were off to bed, you would go to sleep too without another word. I could tell--you were home and you were grieving, that you were scared. Hell, when you asked me not to write to you until the war was over for good--of course I knew. Other men who came home from leave were like that, too. Maybe it would have been easier for you to take your leave elsewhere. I could have been merciful, and not plead for you, so you wouldn’t feel pressure. I knew it would burden you, but I did it anyway.”

“Don’t say that, Eloise,” Will says, his eyes growing wet. 

"I knew that you'd come back if you thought I was desperate, even if you couldn't bear it," Eloise says. Her lips tremble. "I knew what I was doing, when I wrote about losing sleep without you. You had enough of a war on your shoulders. I made you carry more than you needed.

“I could have done for you what we are doing for Tommy,” she says. Her voice cracks. “I could have taken care of your heart better. But I needed you to come home, Will. Because I knew that it could have been the last time we saw you, and I needed the girls to remember you. They were so little at the time, and I needed them to know how you carved out little toys for them, and how you tucked them into bed and walked with them along the river. So that they could remember you even if you were gone, and tell stories about you to their own children. I couldn’t bear to be the only one who would know how much you loved them. I'm so glad you came back. But I’m so sorry that I made it harder for you.” 

Her dark eyes well with tears. William’s chest is filled with so much emotion that he goes down on his knees before Eloise and takes her hand. He grips it tightly, feeling more emotions than he could ever name. Until now, he had never understood what it meant to wait in dread, but thought that he knew exactly what was good for his wife and daughters. He wonders how Eloise had done it, a young mother of only twenty-six at the time, preparing herself to grieve her husband while she had two little girls to lift their spirits and secure a legacy for a father whose face they may forget. He also feels a rushing feeling, as if wind is blowing through his bones. It is only now when he realises that all this time, he had thought he had imagined the weight in his bones.

“You owe me nothing, Eloise,” he says. His voice is hoarse. “Nothing. Ginnie still has that little horse I had carved for her sitting on her windowsill. Edith still remembers riding on my shoulders from that time. I wouldn’t trade them having that for anything in the world. I was the one who was too afraid. Forgive me.”

They stay like this for a while, William pressing her hand against his lips and Eloise gripping his thumb. Those days were so long ago, and yet William’s heart can remember it like yesterday. 

“What shall I tell Tommy for you?” he says against her knuckles.

Eloise swallows hard.

“Tell him that I love him more than there are stars in the sky,” she says. “And I will wait for as long as he needs me to. That I pray for him every day, to a God who loves him far more than I do.” 

“I think you give God a run for His money,” William murmurs.

Eloise chuckles. She bends low to rest her head against William’s. 

“I don’t know what would help him,” Eloise says. Her voice trembles. She doubles over, hunched over her stomach as if Tommy is still within her protection. “Tell him the truth for me, Will. You know it better than I.” 

A shiver runs down his spine. He kisses her forehead, tells her to go to bed, he will take care of the rest. She obliges, and he sits alone in the back room as she climbs up the stairs to the flat. 

I’m back, he thinks, as if it is the first day home instead of the twenty-third year. I’m back, too, he thinks, and it is a truth he is still learning to believe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to have a London scene tacked to the end but gosh, it was getting quite long. If you've made it this far and will make it further......bless you. Honestly. Thank you. 
> 
> Feel free to interact with me on tumblr! My username is mykingdomforapen


	2. the threads of an old life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for anyone and everyone who reads the only thing getting me through this quarantine period....Thank you.  
> I've fallen quite a lot deeper into this fandom than I thought. Follow me @mykingdomforapen on tumblr for a surprising amount of posts about Will Schofield living his best life.
> 
> ALSO credit to scientistsinistral for Arthur, the baker lover boy. :)))
> 
> Chapter title and epigraph taken from Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

> _"How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand...there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep, that have taken hold."_

On the day William is to take the train to London, Ginnie shoves _The Hobbit_ into his pack. 

“In case Tommy wants to read something,” she says. 

William takes it, because he does not have the heart to tell Ginnie that he doubts Tommy will have the time to even look at it. It is a bit of normalcy that they are looking for, a scrap of old Tommy that hasn’t been shot at as he is cornered against the ocean. 

But Ginnie and Edith had been very proud of this gift--they had painstakingly wrapped it in clean paper that Edith doodled on of a map of the world that the story takes place in--with mountain ranges and sprawling villages and the ocean in the west, and the dragon Smaug nestled in between two mountain peaks. They want him to remember how much they love him.

Ginnie stays behind in the pub to open up, and Eloise is trying to shove the few biscuits that they have into William’s pack to take to Tommy. 

“They’ll be nothing but dust by the end of this,” William says.

“He’s scrawny as it is already, and I know that war never fattens a boy up,” Eloise says, rearranging some of William’s socks to make room. “Are you sure you want to take this book?”

“I told Ginnie I’d try,” William says. 

“Well, it’s going to have to go with your pants, then, I’m afraid. You aren’t leaving without these biscuits.”

William snorts. The train is due in another ten minutes--it is far less crowded than it was the last time William stood on the platform with his family, to see Tommy off when he was conscripted. At the station, as floods of other boys huddled by the tracks joining in the chorus of goodbyes, he had tightened the watch strap around Tommy’s wrist. Edith kissed Tommy on both cheeks and Ginnie promised to send him packages. Eloise snuck an extra pair of socks into his belongings, just like she is doing now to her husband, and waited until after supper to cry. 

The train was late that day, so after several rounds of passing the time with noughts and crosses, Tommy huddled with his sisters. William tried not to listen in, but he couldn’t help it. He watched from the corner of his eyes as Tommy unbuttoned one of his breast pockets and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

I’m taking this with me, he said. 

William could just make out from his peripheral that it was the ink drawing of the map that the girls had used to wrap his present. Tommy had spent a good twelve minutes painstakingly unwrapping it without ripping it, until by the time he fully unwrapped it, any reaction he could have given would be anticlimactic by default. But the way that his light eyes widened and the small gasp he made was its own form of fairy tale magic. He is eighteen and a man in the crown’s eyes, but he is always ten years old to William. 

Edith gripped Tommy’s hand tightly, lost for words.

Some good it’ll do you when you get lost in France, Ginnie said before her nose could run. What will you do, look for Rivendell instead? 

He smiled wryly at her. 

It’s fairly accurate, innit? he said. Home is to the west and the dragons are out east. I know where to go. I know which way to come back. 

When the train finally made it to the station and Tommy got on, he opened the window of the compartment. He reached out a hand to his family, and Ginnie immediately took it. He squeezed her hand and not say anything, only held her hand until the train jerked and steadily sped. She ran after him and held on, letting go just before she could fall off the platform. William had nearly run after them as well, in pursuit of the train that would take his children away. But by the time he caught up, Tommy was gone, and he would not be back for a long time. 

William remembers this on his own train ride to London, as he waves Eloise goodbye and promises that the biscuits will make it to their intended destination (while blatantly snacking on one in front of her, because he can’t resist). It has been over half a year since he last saw Tommy. He has been separated from his family for much longer, but always on the side of the coin where he is the one at risk, where he is the one who could die at any moment. His son has no idea how much his family aches for him, no matter how perceptive he may be. 

He thinks about Eloise, who has to do this unbearable waiting twice, and he cannot stop thinking of her until the train pulls up to the platform of Paddington Station. 

London announces itself loud and clear, with its sweltering and crowded train station and ceaseless noise. The occupants of the train file out, and compared to the Londoners who stream into the train as if it is a lifeboat on a sinking ship they move like drunk molasses. 

Even in the crowd, William spots his daughter immediately. Her face breaks into a grin at the sight of him, and although she clearly hasn’t slept well these past several days her face is glowing. Her dress, an obvious hand-me-down from one of Eloise’s nieces, is cinched elegantly at her waist which draws the attention of many men at the platform. William resists staring them all down as he hugs Edith. 

“Let me get that for you,” Edith says, reaching for his carpetbag. 

“Absolutely not,” William says, but she takes it from him anyway. She carries it with ease, reminding William (again) that his daughter is grown and doesn’t need him to do the things he used to do for her anymore. 

“Was it an all right train ride? I’m so glad you’re here.” 

“Everything went fine,” he says, as Edith leads him out of Paddington Station. The streets in the neighbourhood are no quieter, and since they are to meet Tommy at King’s Cross of all places it will not get any more tranquil. “Your mother sends her love and her biscuits.” 

“Thank God,” Edith says, taking one from the tin. “I am eating,” she reassures William once again when he frowns. “I’ve been taking care of myself for five years in this city, Papa.”

“You have a funny way of showing it.” 

“Well, I can show it,” Edith says. “Here--if you’re hungry, I’ve got just the thing to keep you until lunchtime.”

She reaches into her bag that she carries around her shoulder and pulls out freshly baked buns, wrapped in a scarf. It is not the sort of thing William had expected Edith to tote around in the city.

“How did you get bread?” William says as she hands him one of the buns.

“Arthur had given it to me to give you and Tommy,” she says. “He reckoned you’d be hungry after the journey.”

“Who is Arthur?”

“A friend who works at a bakery,” she says, busying herself with wrapping the rest of the buns back up in a scarf. William narrows his eyes. “ _Honest_ , Papa. I have no time for anything else.” 

“That won’t stop it if it becomes more.”

Edith hums noncommittally. 

They take the Circle line to King’s Cross, and Edith bombards him with questions about home as if he is the one living a grand and independent adventure in the nation’s capital, rather than her. He assures her that all is well at home, the pub is still standing, and that Ginnie may or may not be in a cult with a loan shark as a lover. 

“If anyone could multitask that amount of madness, it’d be Ginnie,” says Edith. 

“Ginnie was ready to riot when you made that cryptic call,” William says.

“She would have rioted if she found out before or after,” Edith says. “I didn’t know if--whether or not it would be good news, after all.” 

William bows his head. She picks at the fraying hem of her skirt. 

“Adam Samuels and John Willoughby have died,” William says. “Their parents got the telegram.”

“I remember Adam and John,” Edith says quietly. “They’re the ones who used to play with Tommy, weren’t they?”

William nods. Edith purses her lips. She does not understand what this is like. William, however, remembers it with the pang in his chest. 

“My friend’s husband went missing in the battle as well,” Edith says. “He’s a pilot.” 

The degrees of separation to painful loss are already so close, and the war has only just begun. William doesn’t want to think about how much longer the war needs to take before it strikes them directly.

“Had you known this whole time?” William says. “What was going on in France?”

Edith nods. Her face is taut with stress. 

“That must have been so much to know on your own,” he says. 

“It’s my job,” Edith says with a sigh. “Bloody men can’t keep up with the work on their own.” 

They get out of the Underground and wait at King’s Cross. Tens of others are waiting anxiously at the platform for their loved ones, many of them clutching the last letter that their soldier had written to them detailing which train they will be coming in. 

William is suddenly nervous. He ought to know exactly what to do for his son, to help him and comfort him and minister to him after a harrowing episode of war, because he has gone through the same thing. Yet he finds himself at a loss of words and deeds. Eloise had asked him to tell Tommy the truth, and the truth is so hard that William himself doesn’t know how to put it in words. 

“It’s coming,” Edith says. 

The train rumbles on the tracks towards the platform. William holds his breath. Through the windows he sees tens of young men in identical clothing, scrawny and hungry and eager to get off of the train. Most of them still have their spots. Some are even shorter than Edith. 

“Do you see him?” she says.

William is tall for his generation, and when the train comes to a stop he scans the doors from which the soldiers exit for Tommy. His heartbeat pounds all the more loudly while he waits--is he frightened to see his own son? 

“Tommy!” he calls out.

He spots his son the moment he steps off the train. Thank God, William thinks. He can still recognise his boy. Tommy looks up, bemused as he scans the crowd. William calls for him again, and Tommy finally meets his eye. An emotion that William cannot read passes across Tommy’s face. 

Edith hurries forward without a word, pushing past the crowd of boys that separate them. She immediately takes Tommy’s face in her hands and kisses him twice on both cheeks, before stepping back and taking in the sight of him hungrily. 

“There you are,” she whispers. 

William catches up to them and he takes his son by the shoulder as if to assure himself that Tommy is not an apparition. Tommy looks up to him and smiles, which doesn’t quite reach his eyes. 

“Dad,” he says. 

Before William can say anything, Edith waves her hand.

“Oh, let’s get out of here first,” she says. “It’s too crowded.”

She gestures for William and Tommy to follow her off of the platform. Tommy keeps a steady hand on her shoulder, steering her as the crowd presses in on each side. His stance is stiff, and his grip is tight on Edith until they finally step out into the main hall of the station and they have enough space to breathe. 

“There!” Edith says. “Now we can do it properly.” 

She immediately throws her arms around Tommy. The weight of her bag and William’s carpetbag nearly topple the two of them over, but Tommy steadies them both. He closes his eyes and squeezes back. They stay that way for a long time, and William interrupts only because he can’t help himself. He pulls Tommy and Edith into his arms and holds them tight. Both of his children feel thinner than he remembers. 

Edith pulls away, and Tommy grabs a hold of the bags that she is carrying.

“What on earth are you doing?” he says. “Give me those.”

“You already have your own pack to carry,” Edith says. 

Tommy wrestles William’s carpetbag and Edith’s bag for the shops from her shoulders and slings them easily over his arm. 

“That’s too much,” Edith says. 

“It’s nothing,” Tommy says.

Edith digs through her bag hanging off of Tommy’s shoulder for the scarf full of buns. She shoves one into Tommy’s hand. 

“Eat,” she says. “We’ll need to go back to my flat to drop off your things before finding any lunch.” 

“I see you and Arthur are doing well,” Tommy says.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Edith says swiftly. 

She pointedly avoids William’s gaze, and when she thinks he isn’t looking, she gives Tommy the bird. 

“This way,” Edith says. 

She leads the way, going ahead of the men. William lingers by Tommy’s side, and hungrily drinks in the sight of his son. There was some sun in Tommy’s skin, and the skin on his knuckles were cracked and scabbed. But he walks with steady feet and he seems to hear what people around him are saying, and things like that cannot be taken for granted. 

My son is still alive, he thinks with reverence. He constantly fights the urge to hold Tommy for the rest of time and not let him go. He has never been one to coddle his son--and he wonders now if he may regret missing the chance. 

“Mum and Ginnie send their love,” William says.

Tommy nods in acknowledgement. He keeps his eyes forward. William reaches for his carpetbag from Tommy, who refuses to give it to him, so he pulls out the little book that Ginnie had pressed in his hands.

“Ginnie also insists that you are at the best part,” he says. “And demands you finish it so she can talk to you about it later.”

Tommy glances down at his copy of _The Hobbit_. He smiles wryly as William holds his breath. 

“So she went on ahead of me?” he says. “The cheater.” 

William’s chest twists with unbridled hope that yanks his heart to and fro. My son is still my son, he thinks in spite of himself. 

“All right, here we go,” Edith says. “It’ll be a couple of stops, but it’ll be quick.”

She heads down the steps of the Underground. Tommy stops abruptly in his tracks. 

“Wait,” he says. “How are we getting there?”

“By the tube,” Edith says. “It’s fastest this way. Come on.”

She waves her hand, but Tommy doesn’t move. William’s heart sinks. 

“It’s below ground?” he says. “Then how does it--?”

“Remember how I had described it to you when I first moved here?” Edith says. “It’s got a train that people can go in and ride. It might be a little crowded right now, it being near lunchtime, but we can squeeze in.”

“Couldn’t we walk?” Tommy says. He turns back towards the open air. “It’s warm.” 

“It’ll take ages,” Edith says. 

“That’s fine.”

“Papa won’t be able to walk that far. It’s a good several miles--unless you want to meet us there and Papa and I take the--”

“Don’t,” Tommy says suddenly. His voice is terse. “Don’t go under. I’m not going below, but you shouldn’t either.” 

Edith opens her mouth, then closes it.

“I take the tube to work every day,” she says. 

“Maybe we could take one of the buses?” William suggests. He can feel Tommy tense beside him. “Tommy and I could see a little more of the city that way.” 

He locks eyes with Edith, who hesitates. She finally takes the several steps back up to their level. 

“We might need to change buses at some point,” she says. 

“That’s fine,” William says quickly. 

He gives Edith a grateful pat on the shoulder, when he hopes that Tommy isn’t looking. Tommy says nothing as Edith leads them out onto the streets, whose names make the nicknames of some of the trenches of William’s past finally make more sense. As the Underground becomes farther and farther behind, the tension in Tommy’s shoulder visibly sags to mortification. 

“Sorry,” he says abruptly. 

“What?” Edith says, as she counts out change for her father and brother to take the bus.

“I’m sorry,” Tommy mumbles. “It’s more trouble, isn’t it?” 

“It’s all right, Tommy,” William says. 

Tommy doesn’t say anything. He digs his hand in his pocket for loose coins.

“Is it more expensive, taking the bus?” he says.

“Put that away,” Edith says when she sees Tommy counting out the money as well. “I’ve got it.” 

“If we change buses, does that mean we have to pay extra?”

“The buses are better, anyway,” Edith says. “Maybe you can ride on the top level, you can see the city. Say, if the weather holds up, I can take you to Kensington Gardens, like in the stories.”

She offers Tommy a wide smile. It’s a look that William remembers in Eloise, when he had wandered like a ghost through their home on his last leave, and Eloise tried so hard to brighten his day with funny anecdotes of Ginnie’s first steps, with the girls greeting him with breakfast in bed, with so much effort to comfort him when he should have been the one comforting them. That is over now, and yet here it is again. 

But it is different--it is still different. Tommy’s war is not William’s. William doesn’t know what it has been like, seeing home from the shore and fearing that he will be killed before he can reach it. What it is that Tommy has lived through that makes him afraid of going underground. He doesn’t know how to ask. 

“That might be nice,” Tommy says faintly. 

There is enough space on the bus for the three of them to sit in the top level near the front. The sky is grey with a looming summer storm, the clouds threatening to unleash its rain. Edith points out all of the streets and sights to William and Tommy as they pass them--the British Library, St Paul’s Cathedral, and if they craned their necks high enough, they could make out Tower Bridge stretching over the ever-familiar River Thames. Tommy makes sure to keep a window open, even though the wind musses his hair, and he keeps glancing at the stairway at each stop, until they reach the building in which she boards in Whitechapel. 

“Honestly, I’ve hardly been staying here lately,” Edith says distractedly as she lets Tommy and William into her room. It is small and there is a lingering smell of fried bread that someone must have cooked for breakfast earlier this morning, one storey down. “Sometimes I work too late and the tube closes before I can get home, so I’ll just stay in the rooms at the offices--anyway, Papa, you can sleep in my bed, and Mrs Wright is letting me use the two beds upstairs.”

“Why would you do such a thing?” Tommy says, pointing a framed photo of his own self in uniform sitting on Edith’s nightstand 

“Because your face scares off the monsters under the bed,” Edith says, patting Tommy on the cheek. 

William picks up the photo to look at it, already missing both of his children like hell. At the time it was taken, just before Tommy went to war. At the time, in his military uniform that was still clean and unripped, William was struck breathless by how much older Tommy looked, but now that he sees this photo again, he realises that the uniform only makes Tommy look scrawnier, like a child trying on his father’s shoes. 

“Come on, let’s feed you two before the storm starts,” Edith says. 

“I think I’m craving some more bread, actually,” Tommy says. “You wouldn’t know any good bakeries around--?”

“You’re playing with fire, Thomas,” Edith says. 

Tommy smiles wryly. 

“I wouldn’t mind some more bread as well,” William says.

“Ginnie has put the both of you up to this, hasn’t she?” Edith groans.

“Ginnie has told me absolutely nothing.” 

“And I have a curiosity of my own, Edith,” says Tommy. “Three-fourths of the reason why I wanted to come to London is to find out who this Arthur is.”

“And here I thought that you wanted to see your old sister,” Edith says shrewdly. 

They go out into the neighbourhood again, and the sky has taken a rather sickly green look. Tommy and Edith continue to rib each other as William debates whether or not he should tell Eloise about Tommy’s fears and new habits when she inevitably asks. 

Suddenly, there is a flash of light. William stops in his tracks, the skin on the back of his neck prickling. 

Tommy stops as well, and Edith makes it three paces before she notices. 

“Come on, then,” she says. 

She barely makes the last word out when a sharp _bang_ resounds. William’s heart leaps to his throat. His entire body twitches, about to throw itself over his children and shield it from the explosion, the shrapnel, the rocks and dirt that will come flying overhead and threaten to bury them, but he holds himself back just in time. It has taken him many years to separate thunder from the bombs, but his heart and his gut have yet to catch up. 

Tommy, on the other hand, is breathing shallowly. 

“Tommy,” William says.

Edith’s eyes are wide. She reaches out a comforting hand to Tommy, who jumps at the movement towards him. He looks about him frantically, not quite understanding why the streets of London are still milling with undisturbed people, why the buildings are not skeletal and ruined, why there are no sandbags blockading intersections. 

“Are you well?” Edith says.

Another clap of thunder. Tommy grabs his head. His breathing is guttural and desperate. He is torn between looking up at the sky to see where the bombs may be landing and burying himself into the pavement. It makes William’s entire body hurt to watch. 

In one swift motion he pulls Tommy up to his full height and cups his son’s ashen face. One thumb grazes across his son’s cheekbone, the other is wooden and still. Tommy struggles, his hands gripping William’s wrists. 

“You’re in England, Tommy,” William says steadily. “Not in France. There aren’t any bombs here.” 

Tommy shakes, but he doesn’t say anything. His grey eyes dart around William’s face, as if he is just recognising his father. 

“Look, Tommy,” William says. He turns Tommy’s head towards the street; Londoners are holding newspapers over their heads as the rain begins to fall. “It’s just storming. It’s summertime, so the thunder is rolling in. This is London. Not Dunkirk. It’s thunder, not bombs.”

Edith watches the two of them, quiet and somber. Tommy tries to take deep breaths to match William’s. William puts his hand on Tommy’s shoulders, and he can feel his son’s racing pulse next to his thumb. The rain falls on their heads; Tommy’s curls cling to his face. 

“You’re home, Tommy,” William says. His chest aches, because Tommy is home now, but he won’t be for long. Whether the boys have to prepare for an invasion, or Churchill will send them back to the mainland, this is only true for a moment. “The war isn’t here right now.” 

Tommy takes in several deep breaths and nods. They are properly wet in the rain now, and although Tommy still shudders with each clap of thunder he keeps his gaze firmly on his father and sister to ground himself to the present. 

Dear God, William thinks, his heart aching. The war has only just begun. 

-

In an attempt for higher spirits, Edith swallows her pride and introduces them to Arthur that evening. The young man has warm eyes and a steady smile, and he gives his umbrella to Edith, which makes William feel a little bit relieved (but only by a little bit). 

Tommy gets along all right with Arthur. He tries to act like nothing has happened once the rain calms into a drizzle. Goes the extra mile to prove his capabilities by looking after Edith. He laughs at any joke that Arthur tells over dinner, and occasionally kicks Edith under the table whenever he sees Arthur cast a sidelong glance at her (Edith tries to kick back, and catches William instead), but when he thinks no one is looking, his face falls and he sinks into silence. 

The four of them sit in the snug of a pub, while someone whittles out jaunty tunes on the piano. People sing along to the music, some daring ones dance with several pints in their system. Some more outgoing folk ask Edith and Arthur if they had come together in a more meaningful way, to which the both of them immediately correct the stranger. William suspects that if he and Tommy were not here, Arthur would have asked Edith to dance, but they sit just apart enough. 

Tommy turns the half-drunk pint glass around in his hand, his eyes open but not really seeing anything. He does not look up when William sits down after fetching another cider. 

“What do you think?” William says. “Should the Lady of the Lake get itself a piano?” 

Tommy smiles and says nothing. 

“I wish our snug was a bit bigger,” William says. “Like this. Give people a little more room to move, instead of sit still.” 

Tommy runs his finger around the rim of his glass. William purses his lips. 

“What’s on your mind, Tommy?” he asks. 

Tommy shakes his head. 

“I’m all right,” he says. 

Who are you trying to protect with that lie, Tommy? William thinks. Do you think you can protect your father who knows when you’re lying, or yourself? 

“I didn’t expect you to have come all the way to London,” Tommy says.

Ah, there it is. 

“I wanted to see you,” William says. “And home isn’t far.” 

Tommy nods absentmindedly. William tries to imagine what he would have wanted, twenty years younger, and finds that he doesn’t know. 

“Is it hard to see me?” he says. 

A beat. 

“No,” Tommy says.

The drink in Tommy’s glass ripples, as the hand that holds it shakes. Is he trying to be brave? 

“Is it hard to see me?” Tommy says.

“What?” William says. “Why would that be the case?”

Tommy shrugs. His jaw is tense. William’s stomach sinks. 

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of,” William says. 

Tommy winces. 

“You reacted naturally when--”

“I told you that I’m all right,” Tommy says tersely. 

He grips the glass tightly until his fingerprints smudge onto it. His hands shake. William quiets. Tommy bites his lip before he hangs his head low.

“I am,” he says, his voice brittle. “You don’t have to--I’m not a child. You don’t have to make excuses for me.”

“Thomas Schofield, when have I ever made excuses for you?” William says. 

Tommy does not answer. He stares at the table between him and Arthur and Edith, who are engaged in their own conversation. 

“Look at me, Tommy,” William says.

Tommy takes in a deep breath before lifting his face to William. His son’s face is tired, wan, and it has seen too much, but still the face of a child. It seems only yesterday when it was plump and ruddy, just seconds after coming into the world. 

“Don’t be ashamed by the fact that your body wants to live,” William says. “That it will use every instinct and nerve of yours to fight to live another day.” 

“No one else was afraid,” Tommy says quietly.

“Who else on that street went to war?” William says. “Who else had bombs being dropped over their heads? They had no idea to be afraid, and that doesn’t make them any stronger for it.”

“You weren’t afraid,” Tommy says.

“Tommy,” William says, with half a laugh in spite of himself. “I’m afraid every bloody day of my life.” 

The surprise on Tommy’s face makes William want to laugh, almost, because that fact is so _obvious_ to him. 

“Even today,” William says. “I panicked the moment I heard the thunder. It makes me panic for the past twenty-some years. The first year I came back from the war, I dived under the kitchen table. You weren’t born yet. Your mother had to coax me out.”

“Does it never end, then?” Tommy says. “This?”

William opens his mouth, then closes it. He thinks he ought to be saying something encouraging instead--how he came home all right and conquered his demons, how everything will turn out fine and there is no more fear and no more tears, but he had promised Eloise to tell their son the truth, and the truth was that the war was half a lifetime ago and he is still scared by it. 

But he’s here. And that’s more than most could say. 

“No,” William says. “But you get better at it. Managing it, or fighting it, or remembering what’s really true. That doesn’t end either.” 

Tommy sits back, silently digesting this piece of information. Across from them, a young man asks Edith to dance. Edith demurely declines, but her feet tap to the music. 

“My unit was in Hauts-de-France,” Tommy says. 

This is a surprising admission from Tommy, especially considering how the region’s name sparks a memory in William’s mind, although he does not recall why. 

“We came close to Ecoust at one point,” he says. 

William’s heart skips a beat. 

“Did you go into it?” he says.

“There’s a British cemetery near there,” Tommy says. “From the first war. I tried to look for Tom Blake.” 

William suddenly feels very old. But he feels Tommy’s love draw near him, like a blanket. 

“Were you,” William starts, and stops, and starts again. “Were you able to find him?” 

“Didn’t have much time,” Tommy says regretfully. “We were only passing through.” 

William nods. There is a lump in his throat.

“Thank you,” he says. “For looking.” 

He puts a hand on Tommy’s knee, and tries to put the words that he cannot say in that motion. 

“I heard about your friends,” William says.

“Not now, Dad,” Tommy says. He swallows hard. “Please. Just--not yet.” 

“Tommy,” William says evenly. 

Tommy draws in a deep breath. He's so achingly young, and he doesn't look it anymore. There is a heaviness in his shoulders, a stillness in his face that hides too easily. The boy who clung to his father and wept after George Tatlock's funeral sits quietly after the death of his own friends.

Wiliam takes his hand. Captain Smith from so long ago had told him that it was better to not dwell on it. William had agreed, pushed Tom Blake out of his mind and fought the war, and then dwelt in grief alone for seventeen years. 

“It hurts,” he says. “You have to let it. It will do so without your permission anyway.”

Tommy says nothing. He stares down at his abandoned pint. 

“It doesn’t feel like it at first,” William says. “I know. But you will go on.” 

Tommy’s shoulders slump. He looks so tired. William tightens his grip, as if he can hold on tight enough so that Tommy never has to go back. This may be the last time that he sees him, and the knowledge of that exhausts William, because he is trying to take in every molecule of it, the weight of Tommy’s hand, the rhythm of his breaths, the company of his existence. He wouldn’t trade it for anything. 

“It seems impossible now,” he says. “But you’re going to go on. You can, and you will.” 

William waits, hopefully, for his son to collapse against him like he used to, to hide his face in his father's shoulder and find rest. He does not. His hand is in William's, and it feels so fragile. All of William and Eloise’s love had come together into the form of their children, their two daughters and son--impenetrable, powerful miracles of nature, and yet Tommy feels like glass. All that William loves is such, if only the world would treat them that way as well. 

But it has not and it will not, and his children are not glass. Glass would not make it this far, would not have made it off that beach alive. His children are flesh and bone and soul, and they will live through this devastating loss. William is back, and if he in all his weakness and trembling can still be here, then it means something. 

The piano jingles in a lively dance number. Across from them, Arthur finally draws himself up and offers a hand to Edith. Edith gives him an appraising look, and smiles.


	3. for you have wrestled with God

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you thank you for coming back for chapter 3!! Gosh honestly, I'm not entirely ready to say goodbye to these characters, but one can only do so much before they start jumping the shark. Knowing me though....I love sharks, so. 
> 
> Chapter title paraphrased and epigraph from Genesis 32.

> _ So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” _
> 
> _ But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” _
> 
> _ The man asked him, “What is your name?” _
> 
> _ “Jacob,” he answered. _
> 
> _ Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.” _

William has barely finished his morning tea when he hears shouting and conversation in the streets below. It is a Sunday morning in September, and William has risen early even though he did not fall asleep until nearly two in the morning today. He checks his wrist, remembers, and goes to the living room to look at the mantelpiece clock given to them by Eloise’s parents. It’s only seven in the morning, and most people don’t head to church until about eight thirty. 

He opens the living room window which overlooks the main street. A small crowd of people are below, stopped in their tracks on the road as they chatter tensely with one another.

‘Oi!” William calls out. “What’s going on?”

Duncombe looks up. He hasn’t even shaved before he had run out of his home, shouting about the news.

“Schofield!” he yells. “London’s been bombed!”

William feels the world collapse under his feet. He rushes down the steps and out into the streets, not caring that he has not even put on his shoes to run out. 

“What happened?” William says. His pounding heartbeat makes his chest ache. “Duncombe, tell me everything you know.”

“The Germans sent their bombers over to London last night and bombed it to hell,” Duncombe says. William cannot breathe. “Bloody bastards waited until it was evening and set fire to the place.”

“I heard St Paul’s was in flames,” Wheeler says. 

“Women and children--in their beds, killed, just like that!” 

“Killed?” William echoes, even though it should surprise him the least.

The other men’s faces suddenly grow grave.

“Where does your daughter live, Schofield?” Wheeler says. “They say that the east end’s all ruined--got more than its share of the bombs.” 

The blood drains from William’s face. 

“Whitechapel,” he says. “Whitechapel, that’s in the east of--”

Without another word, he races back inside the pub and burrows himself in the back room with the telephone. He lifts the phone from its cradle and demands for the switchboard operator to connect him to Edith’s boarding home number.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the operator says. “The lines on the east side of London are down.”

“They can’t all be down,” William says. He cannot control his rising voice. “There has to be one number still working--try for me, at least.” 

“Sir, the line won’t connect--”

“So help me God, you will connect me to my daughter!” William snarls. 

When Colonel Mackenzie needed to be told about the general’s orders, cut telephone wires did not stop the message from reaching him. Blake dying in an abandoned field did not stop the message from reaching him. Like hell William is going to accept that there is nothing that this operator can do. 

“I’ll try what I can, sir,” the operator says in a shaking voice. 

William holds his breath, and he knows that he will not breathe again until he hears the voice of his firstborn. When all he hears is static and then silence, he chokes. 

He collapses onto the chair, his hand shaking so hard that he can hardly keep the receiver of the phone to his face. Not Edith, he moans in his chest. Dear God, please, not Edith. 

The door of the back room opens. William jumps. Wheeler is standing at the doorway, face drawn with worry.

“You left the front door of the pub open,” he says. “Did you hear from Edith?” 

“Her line is down,” William whispers. 

He presses a hand to his chest, struggling to breathe. 

“That doesn’t mean her home’s been hit,” Wheeler says. “It was in the evening, and didn’t you say once your daughter works late nights?” 

William nods desperately. Yes--yes, she said herself that she stays in the office overnight sometimes, and that is near the city centre. But who is to say that the Germans haven’t bombed there as well? Would she have been working on a Saturday night? There are too many reasons to hope and too many reasons to fear. 

“Will?” 

William’s breath catches in his throat. He and Wheeler turn around to see Eloise standing outside the door, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. Her eyes flit over the expressions on their faces and her fingers tighten around the yarn. 

“What’s happened?” she says. “Will, tell me what’s going on.” 

“London’s been bombed,” William says. 

Eloise says and does nothing. She is frozen on the spot, her pale face almost entirely still with shock. William gets out of his seat and draws Eloise close to him, holding her as if she is the one who needs shielding, not Edith. He feels her tremble violently in his arms, her choked breath in the shoulder of his jumper. 

Wheeler fixes them a drink and promises them that he will tell them any more news if he hears it--he has a nephew who works at the BBC and gives him news quite immediately. Eloise sits at one of the tables, not moving a muscle as William paces near the telephone. Edith knows her parents well--she calls immediately whenever there is trouble, and does everything to stop people from fretting. Nothing would keep his daughter away from her father, nothing except...

“Morning, morning!” Ginnie bounds down the stairs. Her loud voice makes William flinch. “Aren’t you two up early today!” 

She stops at the foot of the stairs when she sees the state of her parents. The smile saps away immediately from her face. 

“What is it?” she says. “Is it Tommy?” 

Eloise shakes her head, but she is still struck dumb. Ginnie turns desperately to William. A chill runs down William’s back. The words come out of him with difficulty, even though he has already said it minutes ago.

“Edith’s neighbourhood has been bombed,” William says.

Ginnie lets out a sound that William hasn’t heard from her in years--a whimper. It unleashes a fire in him that he cannot contain, and for the first time he hates the Germans. 

“We’ll find out what’s going on,” he says, trying to be everything that he can. “It’s still early, and it has only just happened. She’ll call us.” 

He has never heard himself sound so hopeful in a long time. He doesn’t want to be practical or honest anymore. Ginnie goes to Eloise and puts an arm around her as Eloise buries her face in her hands in private prayer. It still does not release William from the burden of responsibility, as if he is the one who can control his family’s fate. 

They wait by the telephone for two hours--they miss Mass, but they’ve prayed more than enough to compensate. Every now and then a neighbour pops by, having heard about Edith, and offer any help and consoling word. Ginnie graciously receives the passersby while William and Eloise hold their breaths. When the phone suddenly rings, William snatches it off the cradle.

“Schofield 6013,” he says, heart fit to burst.

“Papa?” 

William can’t make a sound. He immediately puts his wooden hand over his eyes as he musters all of himself not to cry out loud, because he needs to be strong. Edith’s voice is tremulous and tender, and to hear her is like hearing the chorus of angels. 

“Edith,” he whispers. “Oh, thank God, Edith.”

Eloise jumps from her chair, hands over her mouth. William looks her in the eyes and nods, and she practically sings in relief. 

“Edith, are you all right?” William says. “I couldn’t reach your boarding house, the line was disconnected, and I thought--” 

“I’m all right,” she says, her voice strained. “I wasn’t home when it happened.” 

“Your home, is it--?”

“One bomb landed right down the street of it,” Edith says, and her voice cracks. William stays still. “Blasted the whole street and half the buildings. There’s hardly anything left, and some people were still in their rooms when--”

“Oh, sweetheart,” William says. 

Edith takes a moment to recompose herself. By now, William has his arm wrapped around Eloise, holding her so close that she could hear from the telephone as well. 

“Where are you now?” he says. “Where did you stay last night?” 

“I stayed at the office,” Edith says. “Last night Arthur was walking me home--his sister and I went to the cinema and we were walking home and then--then it happened. I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner, Papa, I--I don’t know what came over me.”

“It’s all right,” William says. “What matters most is that you’re okay.”

But for how long? William has hardly any time to process the fact that the war has come to England now, right over his home. There is no chance that this will be the only time that Germany will drop bombs over London. He will have to hold his breath and dread every day for not just one child but two. Not only that, but time will tell if the rest of England will fall into war. He had thought, foolishly, that he would never have to be bombed again. 

“Do you need to come back home?” he asks. 

“I can’t,” Edith says. “No, there’s so much work to do. More, now.”

“You can’t live at the office, Edith. It’ll drive you mad. And it’s not any safer.”

“It’s underground now. It’ll be as safe as everyone else staying in the stations,” Edith says. “And Arthur’s sister is lending me her clothes. I just wish--oh, this sounds  _ awful _ . I don’t know where my photograph of Tommy is. That’s all I could think about this morning, even though there is so much else to worry about. I can’t stop even when I tell myself to.” 

“You’re still trying to understand what’s just happened,” William says over Edith’s faltering. “Darling, you’ll have many days to sort out all the thoughts you have about this. Hold on, your sister wants to talk to you.” 

Ginnie, having heard William talking on the phone, had hurried to the room and now hovers over them. He hands her the phone and she swoops down on it immediately. William steps out of the room to give the women privacy.

As the initial relief of hearing Edith’s voice simmers, it peels back the gild of his spirits to that heavy dread that he carries in his chest. He remembers how selfishly fortunate he felt when he stood on the train platform with only one child in a soldier’s uniform while the Petersons had to send off all three of their boys to war. Now, his daughter is caught in the crossfire of war as well. 

A surge of anger cuts through his chest. He had long lost any illusion that the first war had amounted to anything--the idea that a human war could end any other wars is ridiculous at best and doomed at worst. And yet, for all his bitterness and resentment, all the wisdom he had thought he had by now, he has the audacity to be betrayed that such a promise has failed.

-

The bombs do not stop falling on London for months. Each day feels like a new sort of death, and William barely gets any sleep each night, straining his ears to hear the whistle of a bomb falling too close over his daughter’s head. 

Edith calls just before work just to let them know she is okay each morning, as early as six in the morning. When she is too busy, Arthur will call them for her, and assures William that he heard from Edith that very morning, and she is still breathing. Even though William regularly goes to bed past midnight, he forces himself awake at five thirty in the morning just to wait by the telephone. He ignores Eloise’s insistence that she can get up alone, that he should get more rest. No parent should have to wait alone to hear if their child is still alive. 

He does not tell Tommy in their letters to him about Edith, but he would be foolish to assume that the news of London hasn't traveled to Tommy's depot. His son tugs at his hair when he is stressed. He doesn't say a word when he is afraid, just clenches his jaw and pick at his cuticles until they bleed when there is nothing he can do to change it. He is especially protective of Edith, but being a soldier in the war can't even protect her now. 

“Come home, Edith,” William says. He hears stories about how Edith has to sleep in the Baker Street tube station, side by side with hundreds of strangers without any room to turn. She doesn’t tell him details--in fact, he hears her wear a smile as she talks with him, four minutes each day before she has to disappear underground again, away from the sun, to work in the war. “Please come home.”

“Don’t, Papa,” Edith says. The fourth minute has come too quickly, but he doesn’t want to let her go. “You know I can’t.” 

“Who says that you can’t?” says William. “It’s so dangerous. Edith, every night--”

“I’m handling it just fine,” Edith says sharply. William almost laughs, because that only proves his point further. “And I can’t walk away now. I’ve got to do my part and you know that this work is important.” 

“You’re sleeping in the tunnels!” he says. “You haven’t got a  _ home _ .”

“This is so that we can keep having one!” Edith says. “You can’t save just me, Papa, and let everyone else do the fighting. You know that.”

Her voice rings with stubbornness, numbing William with how right she is. He closes his eyes. His joints hurt, his back hurts, he is too old for this. 

“I know,” William says hollowly. “You’re right. I can’t. But I can’t lose you, either. Don’t make me bury you. Please, Edith. I won’t be able to bear it.”

He doesn’t know what possesses him to say it instead of swallowing it down and leaving each thought unexpressed. He loves his children more than there is water in the ocean, but he thinks back and struggles to remember the last time he has properly said it.

“Papa,” Edith says. 

Her voice trembles. William realises--and perhaps it is not as accidental as he feels that it is--that he is doing exactly what Eloise has confessed to doing to him back in his war. 

“I’m sorry,” William says. “I shouldn’t have said that. That isn’t fair of me.”

Edith doesn’t say anything, and William doesn’t blame her. His heart sinks. 

“I’ve got to go,” Edith says wearily. “I’ll call you tomorrow morning, all right?” 

“Yes,” William says. His chest feels empty. “Goodbye, sweetheart.” 

The line ends, and William feels like he dies again, and he will not resurrect until twenty-four hours later, when his daughter lets him know that she is still here. 

When William updates Eloise and Ginnie about Edith, Ginnie’s face grows redder and redder with pent-up indignation. William hasn’t even finished speaking when she hurries into her room, and when William catches up with her, he finds her hastily packing a bag.

“If she isn’t coming back home,” Ginnie says, “then I’m going to her.” 

She has already gotten a bag halfway packed, and she has only thought of a first aid satchel and textbooks. William plants himself firmly at her bedroom door, feeling himself turn into stone. 

“Virginia,” he says. “I did not teach you to be a fool.”

Ginnie looks up, wild-eyed. She shoves a jumper into her bag.

“I’m going to London,” she says, raising her voice. “I’m going to Edith.” 

“And then what?” William says sharply. “What good will that do?”

“More good than if I just stayed here!” she says. 

A fury that he does not understand surges in him. 

“Will it?” William says. “Are you going to catch the bombs before they land? Are you going to get on a fighter jet and shoot down the Germans before they come across the channel?”

Ginnie’s jaw clenches. William knows that Ginnie takes time to see sense after she’s gone through her emotions, but the fact that she wants to argue only infuriates him. 

“She shouldn’t have to be alone,” Ginnie says. “She needs someone to be with her, take care of her if she gets hurt--”

“Have you missed the bit about London being bombed?” William says. “Or are you an expert on blunt force trauma all of a sudden?”

“I can handle it,” Ginnie says stubbornly.

William takes in a cold, deep breath.

“Do you know what it’s like, Ginnie?” William says. “To be bombed?” 

His voice changes. He can feel it in his own chest, and see it in the expression that flickers across Ginnie’s face. 

“Put your things back,” he says. “Right now. And go with your mother to the People’s Pantry, if you want to do some good. Don’t make your mother and me fear for your life on purpose.”

Ginnie is rooted on the spot, her face pale and frozen. William barely breathes himself, but he turns away and closes her door behind him. Through the walls, he can hear her crying in frustration, and if he isn’t so angry and terrified, he would rush in and take her in his arms. 

The days pass with this pattern that he will never get used to. Wake up, assure himself that Edith is still alive (for now), check the mail for any word from Tommy (none yet, but it has only been a week and a half), maybe work sometime in between. Light the candles with Eloise in the church, kneel at the pews and grip his hand, and hear nothing but a growing buzz in his head the rest of the day. 

He doesn’t know what this tangled sound in his head is--it feels as if a thorn bush has grown inside his head, and it rips him from the inside if he tries to pull it out. Only that one day, as he holds hands with Eloise and Ginnie at the dinner table to say grace, he finds that he cannot even make out the words.

“Eloise,” he says. “Can you do it tonight?” 

Eloise looks up curiously to him. He shakes his head. He knows that he knows the words, but the thorns in his head have taken up too much space. He can hardly string two words together. 

“ Bless, O Father, Thy gifts to our use and us to Thy service,” Eloise murmurs, “for Christ’s sake. Amen _.” _

Amen, William mouths, but his voice does not catch up. 

-

“Up, up, up, Will,” says Eloise. “Let’s go.”

William hasn’t even opened his eyes yet. He doesn’t remember going to bed in the first place, and he doesn’t even remember what year it is. Just seconds ago, before Eloise’s voice wakes him up, he was living in Thiepval, 1916. Time skips twenty-four years in twenty-four seconds. 

“I don’t want to get up,” William mumbles. 

“It’s nine in the morning, Will, you’ve had a solid eight hours.” 

William’s eyes fly open. He sits up immediately. 

“Had I missed Edith’s call?” he says. “Is she all right? Did she--?”

“She’s called already, love,” Eloise says. “I let you sleep. Don’t argue,” she says when William opens his mouth reproachfully. “You bloody well needed the extra four hours. Put on your clothes.” 

She tosses his trousers and his jumper at his face. He sputters.

“What’s all this?” he says. 

“We’re going on a short excursion,” she says. 

“How short?” says William. “The pub needs to open in three hours.”

“Ginnie’s already agreed to open today,” says Eloise. She puts some marmalade sandwiches wrapped in terry cloth in a small satchel. “We’ll be back before we open for the evening, don’t worry.” 

William drags himself out of bed to dress. Outside, the October sky is bright white, the sun pressing itself against the layer of clouds. He hopes that that means no plane could see its way to London. 

“How was Edith?” William says as Eloise helps him put on his prosthetic. “Did she sound all right today?” 

“As all right as she’s ever been,” Eloise says. 

“Maybe we should stay by the phone. In case she needs to call back.”

“We need fresh air, Will. We need to breathe.” 

William knows that she is right. He sees it in her too, the shadows under her eyes and the tossing and turning on her side of the bed. The war has only just begun--they need to last longer than this. 

They head westward, along the River Thames, until the city streets slowly blend into meadows and trees. By the time they decide to stop, they’ve eaten their way through the marmalade sandwiches, and they stand out in the open meadows, where the nearest building is a small dash of colour behind them. The autumn is crisp, but the air is still so they do not shiver. William stretches his arms over his head, and realises how tense his muscles are. 

“Didn’t think ahead to save our sandwiches for a picnic,” he says. “Or a blanket.” 

“I thought we might do something new,” says Eloise.

William raises an eyebrow at Eloise, who scoffs.

“All right, not  _ that _ ,” she says. “Far too cold for that.” 

“That hasn’t stopped us before. Don’t you remember how Tommy was conceived?” 

“Well, we were young and I had joints that could handle it.”

They share a small laugh, the first in a while, and it almost feels normal. William thinks that they ought to sit in the grass, but Eloise doesn’t make a move to set herself down. She looks out to the wide expanse of the sky with an expression of grim satisfaction. 

“You know what I used to do when I was upset?” she says. “When you were in France?” 

William looks to her with confusion. She tilts her chin up, so that she watches the clouds.

“There were days that I was so scared and angry I could just scream,” she says. “So I’d ask my mother and father to watch the girls and then I would take a bicycle out here. It’s far enough that no one could hear me. And I’d just scream. I’d run until I was out of breath. Until my stomach settled.” 

She turns to William. “Race me,” she says.

Without another word, she dashes deep into the fields. William follows automatically, even though his knees are troublesome and his shoes aren’t made for this kind of activity. Eloise bunches her skirts up to her waist as she runs, kicking off her shoes so they go flying into the tall grasses. 

He lunges for her, but she dodges. Her hair comes loose from her bun, and it trails after her--thick, long, and dark like their daughters’. They are both breathing heavily as they chase one another, running until they can’t help but gasp with pain. With each step, a knife of untamed adrenaline pierces William’s stomach, and before he can understand why, he lets out a scream. 

He stumbles to a stop and screams until his back hunches like a dragon breathing out the fire that has been boiling in its throat for weeks. All the adrenaline unlocks the compartments in his mind until he feels everything, all at once, with the rare relish that no one but Eloise can hear him. 

His screaming collapses into jagged breaths, and when he looks up, Eloise has a wild look in her eyes, but she isn’t looking at him. Her gaze is pinned to the sky, as if she could see the Luftwaffe from where she stands. 

“ _ I hate this _ !” she yells. 

Her teeth are bared. Her hands are bunched into fists, and her eyes gleam with angry, unshed tears. 

“I hate this, I hate this, I hate this!” 

William freezes in the spot; his instinct it to compensate for her emotions, to balance them out by calming himself down, reasoning with his tangled emotions, staying quiet. But with each beat of his heart, what he truly feels is  _ I hate this too _ . 

“Our children didn’t start this war!” Eloise says. “Why do they have to die in it? It’s not right, it’s not bloody right and I can’t-- _ do _ \--anything about it!”

She runs her hands through her hair that is coming loose from its curls, as the wind howls in agreement. 

“I’ve done this too many times!” she cries out. “Haven’t I done this enough? Hasn’t my family gone through this enough? How long do I have to be afraid?” 

William draws in a deep breath. The thorns in his head intensify--or maybe they are barbed wire, trying to bar him from moving forward so that he is trapped. 

“Come on, Will!” she says. She turns to him. “Tell me what’s going on.” 

“You know what’s going on,” William says, his throat tightening. 

“Tell me, then,” she snarls, as a lump grows in his throat. “Tell me what’s wrong.” 

He breathes deeply, and each gulp of air burns. He has no idea what will come out. 

“Come on, Schofield!” she says. “What the hell is wrong with everything?” 

“IT WAS ALL FOR NOTHING!” he screams. 

The words tear his lungs on the way out, until his whole chest burns. He is only just understanding what he means by it when it is halfway out of his mouth. And with it, it is like he draws out poison from his blood. 

“I lost myself in France!” he accuses the sky. “I lost my mind, I lost my friend, I lost my bloody soul in the war! It was supposed to end all other wars, some good it’s done! And for what? It couldn’t even protect my children.” 

His vision blurs, and he cannot stop himself. All of himself spills out, down to the darkest stain. 

“And you!” He shakes his last fist left to the sky. “You’re letting it all happen. You want to curse anyone--curse me! Kill me instead! Don’t fucking touch them--if you love them so much, why do I have to beg you to save them? God, why do I have to beg you to save them?” 

His face crumples without warning, and that fire is overwhelmed with the grief for the most important ones in his life. He doubles over, choking on his own breath, moaning from the terror that only a parent can understand. 

He eventually sinks to the ground, exhausted and shaken. Eloise collapses beside him as well--flushed, breathless, freed. As he slowly regains his breath, he almost wants to laugh out of nerves, because he should be struck down by lightning for lashing out at God, but instead he is slouched in the damp grass, silent. If he had ever raised his voice to his own father, he would have never seen the light of day again. Instead, he clings to the hem of God’s robe and says, not until you bless me. 

When William can speak again, he says, “Some poor sheep around here are probably terrified out of their wits right now.” 

Eloise chokes on an unexpected laugh. She leans her head against his shoulder and holds out her hand to him; he clasps it tightly, as if they are about to walk into battle together. They grip each other until their heartbeats slow down, until they are like exhausted children that their father will carry back home. 


	4. the young perish and the old linger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this was supposed to be a four chapter story, but then I realised I was really fooling myself if I thought I could condense one of the sections into just a small section. So you'll have to bear with me just a little longer :). 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who came back for chapter 4!! I hope you enjoy <3 
> 
> chapter title taken from--you guessed it--Professor Tolkien

_24 October 1940_

_Dear Mum, Dad, and Ginnie,_

_Don’t feel like just because I’m not at home that my books are off limits. I don’t want everyone else giving up their books to be pulped and leave mine alone because you feel bad to give them away when I’m not here. If they need to be donated, please give them up. Let me do my part for the country as well._

_I just ask you don’t give away the Hobbit book just yet since I still haven’t finished it. Ginnie, if you’ve already gotten to the end, I won’t hear a word of it. I’d be cross with you if I didn’t know you’re the one dying to badger me about it. And please don’t give away the King Arthur story, either, if you please. I imagine it like an old teddy bear, waiting for me at the end of a long day._

_I’m glad to hear that you all got to say hello to Ben Wheeler while he was on his leave, and good to hear that he and his family are doing well. Don’t know if he mentioned it but he looked out for me when we were training before France. I’ve heard it said he will have to go to Egypt, or somewhere close to there. I don’t think any of us boys ever imagined many of us ever leaving Reading, much less to the pyramids and the Nile. How in the world did we get here? How far will I go?_

_No need to worry about me. If I am slow to write, I’m only thinking of something interesting to say. I haven’t got many stories to tell lately._

_Tell me about the Lady of the Lake, if there is anything new. Is that stray cat still sneaking in through my bedroom window? Leave him a bit of crumbs for me. I think we should name him Sootball, on account of his paws. Or, tell me about Mum’s work at the People’s Pantry, it sounds like wonderful work. I want to know what has made you smile this week._

_I think of you all every day._

_Love,_

_Tommy_

_-_

  
  


William has woken up from many dreams about the war, shaken with a pit in his stomach. But this is the first time he wakes up crying.

He doesn’t trust that he is either awake or dreaming, doesn’t remember when his consciousness shifts from dream to reality. Only that in one plane of reality, he was taking Tommy’s books from his little bookshelf and stacking them neatly atop the bed, because his boy was never coming back, and he wouldn’t be needing them anymore. He had held out the King Arthur book that Tommy had read over and over again as a boy until the front cover hung on by a thread; he squeezed his eyes shut and let out a sob. And then, at some point, he is lying in bed in his own room instead, afraid to open his eyes in case his dream is actually the truth, that he has to live in a world without his son. 

The tears keep falling, down his crow’s feet and along his temples. He doesn’t make a sound, but his nose is slowly closing up, and he stems it with the elbow of his pyjamas so that he won’t wake Eloise. 

Tommy, Tommy, he thinks, and on top of all that fear William _misses_ him. Misses Tommy’s sullenness in the early morning, his singing under his breath while he washes the dishes, his impassioned defenses for miserable creatures, his quiet presence when he scribbles at his desk. His son is still alive but he is so far away. After dreaming him dead William feels as if he has lived seven lifetimes too many. 

Suddenly, there is a hand in his hair. William opens his eyes, but he cannot see in the dark. He faces the nightstand, but he feels Eloise shift behind him. Her fingers brush his hair, stroking his head. She doesn’t say anything, or come any closer. Her touch is as soft as falling snow. 

William buries his face deeper into his pillow. His face does not twist, a sob does not rip his throat. Despite all his misgivings, he lets himself be loved. 

-

_18 December 1941_

_Dear Mum, Dad, and Ginnie,_

_I’m sorry that I haven’t written sooner, hope I haven’t caused you to worry. When I got your early Christmas parcel I couldn’t stop thinking about how lucky I am. I’ve shared the pud with some of the others, there are a couple who don’t have homes to write to so your biscuits and well wishes cheered them up._

_I also want to say, particularly to Ginnie, how dare you. Ending the chapter with a cliffhanger like that? You say it’s because you’ve run out of space on the paper to finish what happens next in your mystery story but even a blind person could tell that your handwriting grew larger and larger as you went down the sheet just so you could use that excuse. Now you’re going to take ages to write back, aren’t you, just so I can squirm waiting to know what’ll happen now that the painter has found out that her muse was the missing boy all along. Blimey, Ginnie!_

_We’ll be having our own Christmas celebration of sorts here, so don’t think for a second to be sad. If I will be anything this holiday it will certainly not be lonely, with all the other boys with me. So in a way it will be twice as loud and rambunctious as Christmases at home, even after Edith gets into the sherry._

_The depot isn’t what I would call scenic, but consider these sketches my greeting cards to the family. If they are at least a little less disturbing than a classic Victorian Christmas card, then I’ve done what I set out to do. I’ve sent you Edith’s as well--I’m hoping you’d be able to give it to her for me. I’d send it to London, but I reckon it’d be quicker to send it to Reading instead._

_Please don’t think that I take your letters for granted. I am quite useless at responding. I’ve always been far better at reading things, now that I remember. I’ll do better next time, I will._

_Sending my love to you all, and Happy Christmas._

_Love,_

_Tommy_

_-_

William was putting the glasses back under the counter when he hears a knock on the pub window. At first, he freezes, and his hand reaches automatically for the cricket bat he keeps under the bar, just in case. He knows that it is extreme--it is probably Nicholas, Wheeler’s youngest child who helps run errands for William for a little pocket money. He always forgets something, be it a scarf or a parcel he had picked up along the way, or inexplicably at one point, his own home key. But when he looks up to the windows and sees a mittened hand waving furiously at him, he shoots up from the ground immediately. 

He frantically unlocks the front door and ushers the two people huddled under the awning inside. Once the door is properly shut behind them, he cups Edith’s wintry face and kisses her forehead countless times. 

“Papa!” Edith said with a laugh full of chattering teeth. 

“I thought you said you couldn’t be home for the holidays!” William says.

“I twisted an arm or five to let me come home for at least the weekend,” Edith says. She stands on her tiptoes to kiss William on the cheek. “Happy Christmas, Papa.” 

William breathlessly beholds his daughter. She looks ready to fall asleep standing up and doesn’t seem to have eaten as much as before, but none of them have. Still, she grins boldly and most importantly, she is here. The world feels a little more bearable. 

He looks past Edith’s shoulder and is surprised to see Arthur standing behind her, his scarf wrapped all the way up to his nose. He eagerly shook William’s hand, looking far more awake than any of them. 

“Happy Christmas, sir,” he says. “I just wanted to make sure Edith got home all right.” 

William glances at Edith, whose grin has a hint of bashfulness. 

“I’ve already got a room at an inn for the night,” Arthur says hastily. “Don’t want to intrude, of course, especially since this is all unannounced.” 

“Well,” says William, and he hesitates.

“It’s okay, Papa,” Edith whispers. “He doesn’t have to stay with us.” 

William puts a hand on her shoulder and grips it. Tommy’s room isn’t holy ground--if someone needs it, Tommy would rather it be used than barred off from strangers. But his daughter’s companion is a different story. 

“You’re freezing,” William says, tapping the tip of Edith’s nose. “Come on, we may still have some soup in the kitchen for--”

_“Edith! ”_

Ginnie comes flying down the staircase and launches herself on Edith, knocking her into Arthur. She immediately punches Edith in the shoulder.

“I thought I heard you down here!” Ginnie says. “I thought I was going mad, but I _knew,_ I knew it was you, you _sneak_.” 

“You hit me? You dare?” Edith says. “I come all this way over hill and over dale and you dare?” 

She laughs heartily before she embraces Ginnie. The sight of the two sisters clasping each other and talking a hundred words a second beautifies William’s world. 

“You came just in time,” Ginnie says. “I have been _dying_ to tell you about what Greta Moore did last week during class.” 

“Please let Mum have a moment with her first before you go on that tangent,” William says. “Otherwise she won’t be able to say anything to her for three hours.”

“Papa!” Ginnie says, but she does not argue that that would not be the case. She takes Edith by the elbow and drags her towards the stairs. “Well, hurry up, then! Mum is going to go _mental_ , she has been moping about how she never gets to see you--” 

“Ginnie!” Edith says. “You haven’t even said hello to Arthur yet.” 

“Lovely to see you!” Ginnie says with a cursory wave at Arthur before she shoves Edith up the stairs. Edith sputters protests, but Arthur assures her hastily.

“I’ll help your father clean up a bit,” he calls after her.

William has not agreed to this, but there is no point in saying it. Ginnie sweeps Edith up to the family flat, and through the door he can hear Eloise yelp in surprise before covering Edith with kisses. This leaves William and Arthur in the quiet pub, with a couple more glasses to clean between them. 

William gives Arthur a nod of acknowledgement and not much else before returning to the glasses--it is late, and he would rather do the cleaning quickly to have some more time with Edith before retiring to bed. She has a day and a half at most to be home, before she has to go back underground and buried in the war. 

“Long night?” Arthur says.

William gives him a sidelong glance. Arthur is mimicking his movements as he wipes the remaining glasses. 

“Typical,” William says. “Not as long as yours, I’m sure.”

“It wasn’t bad at all,” Arthur says. “Time passes quickly with Edith.” 

Anticipation bubbles underneath the surface of his voice. 

“Are you leaving for London tomorrow morning, then?” William says. 

“Yes, I think so,” Arthur says. 

“Eloise wouldn’t hear a word of that,” William says mildly. “She’d at least want to invite you for supper.” 

Arthur hums in response. William counts his even breaths, the quiet between the two men drawn taut with anticipation.

“Do you have time to talk for a little bit, sir?” Arthur says.

William’s heart skips a beat. He sets his rag down.

“What is it, Arthur?” William says. 

Arthur swallows nervously. He draws in a deep breath and looks up to William with a shockingly familiar youth, hat in his hands with nothing to lose. 

“I also wanted to follow Edith to Reading to ask you a question,” says Arthur. He laughs self-consciously. “I don’t know if this is the right time or place to do it.” 

William waits. This makes Arthur even more nervous, and his cheeks pinken. 

“Mr Schofield,” Arthur says. “I would like to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage.” 

Something hardens in William’s spirit, as if he builds a wall around his heart and his family, as if to say _not so fast._ As the man who is in love with Edith waits with bated breath for an answer, William suddenly remembers the one-year-old baby who lifted her arms up to him so that he could throw her up in the air and catch her every time before she could fear for a second that she would hit the ground. 

“You want to propose to Edith,” he says. 

“I do,” Arthur says. “I know that I’m not wealthy or high-standing by any means, I don’t have riches or property, but I have these two hands that I will use to take care of her--and protect her, and provide for her, sir.”

“Can you do all that with just one?” William says.

The expression on Arthur’s face is almost enough to break the tension. 

“I didn’t mean it that way, sir,” he says quickly. “I’m very sorry, I didn’t mean any sort of disrespect--”

“I mean it, Arthur,” says William. “You may be whole now, but you may not be five, ten, twenty years down the line. She may not be either. Will you still take care of her, if either of you have lost an eye, or a leg, or your mind?” 

Arthur soberly bows his head. William wishes that he is exaggerating--that he is merely being an overprotective father and is too hard on her suitor. But the bombs could come back to London any day for all they know. Great Britain could fall under the Germans. Even if they come out of this war victoriously, another one could rise from these ashes and eat up their children, and their grandchildren. 

“I will,” says Arthur. “Of course, I will take care of her.” 

William gives him a long look. Arthur’s green eyes are earnest, hopeful, and naive. God, had William ever been this young, standing before Eloise and telling her that he would build a home for her? How is he supposed to trust this young man to love Edith to the end of their lives? 

“I don’t know you well,” William says.

Arthur keeps William’s gaze steadily. Up until this point, he has trusted Arthur for making sure Edith got back home safely after long days in the war rooms, providing for her when her flat had been destroyed, making Tommy laugh and Edith beam until her blue eyes crinkle. Now, he hesitates, because he suddenly feels like Arthur will take something precious and important from him. Being Edith’s father and protector had sustained him in France, even when it hurt--when he shivered in Thiepval he thought of his baby girls and was filled with so much painful love that it shook him back to life, reminded him that he should care if he died. 

“I know,” Arthur says. “I know it must be forward of me to ask you now--”

“When did you know?” William says. 

“Sorry?” 

“When did you know that you wanted to marry my daughter?” 

It is none of his business, but Eloise is not here to talk him out of prying. He braces himself for a pat answer, about bombs falling over their heads and Arthur realising in a life and death situation that Edith is the one he wants to spend the rest of his life--however long or short the war may allow it to be. It isn’t that William is a romantic, but he does not want the threat of death to be the impetus for such a significant life decision for his daughter. 

“She was having dinner with my sister and me in my sister’s flat,” Arthur says. He had not stopped to think about it. “At one point Claire was talking to a neighbour, so it was just Edith and me, preparing food in the kitchen. She asked me to help her with the potatoes, and while I was chopping them and passing them to her, I realised--I wanted to make dinner with her every day. I want to cut her the best part of the bacon for her to eat with toast. I want to help her put on her shoes every morning before she goes out the door.” 

He takes in a deep breath, and his eloquence flees. The hardness melts in William’s chest, leaving something tender and stung under the ice and stone he had built up inside. Akin to a bone being snapped in half, or perhaps, a broken bone being set correctly--it is sharp and sudden, and joy and sorrow are synonymous in the sensation. 

“Mr Schofield,” Arthur says. “I will love and take care of her as well as you have taken care of her.”

“She has been taking care of herself,” William says softly. 

He cannot accuse Arthur of taking something from him that hasn’t been within his power for years now. Edith is the one who keeps calm and carries on through endless nights of bombs and war, and it is Arthur who walks alongside her as she does, not William. He is not giving his daughter away--she has already walked off on her own, and it makes William so proud and sad. 

“Arthur,” William says. “If you want to marry anyone, especially my daughter, you must promise this to her. You must promise her that you will always come back to her, no matter what happens.” 

Arthur does not interrupt with lovesick protests and declarations that he would never do such a thing. It is William’s turn to feel nervous, to remind himself of that aching vulnerability from his past that he is still slowly learning to forgive himself for. As the man who is in love with Edith waits, William remembers the little girl he had once left behind.

“No matter what you’re afraid of, or what you believe will happen, you must come back to her,” says William. “Do for her what I almost would not. Do better than me, Arthur.” 

He puts the last glass on the rack. He takes in a deep breath, feeling the air seep into the aching places, and holds his hand out to Arthur. Arthur takes it firmly--his eyes shine, but before he can open his mouth to say what for, the door at the top of the stairs flies open, and Eloise sticks her head out from the doorway.

“Get up here, you two!” she says. “Edith is home for Christmas! Leave the cleaning for tomorrow, no one will notice!” 

William cracks a smile. Arthur gestures to William-- _after you._ William puts down his rag and follows Eloise’s voice to welcome his daughter home.

-

_2 July 1942_

_Dear Mum, Dad, and Ginnie,_

_Reading about Edith’s wedding was truly like reading a fairy tale. It all sounded too lovely to be real. For the past several nights, right before I sleep I would read your letter, and I would then close my eyes and hope that I’ll end up dreaming about it, so I can live it in another way. It hasn’t exactly worked yet, but still, I have slept more soundly because of it than I have for years._

_There are new recruits being brought in now, and I’m taking care of some of them. They’re wonderful fellows, and the three that I’ve gotten to know are lively, ridiculous lads. One of them, he’s from Cookham, his family runs a shop back home and sends him care packages. During particularly rough days, if I’m feeling unwell, he sneaks lemon sherberts to me. And the other two’s from London, and they constantly take the mickey out of me because I haven’t got a single clue what they means when they say all sorts of rhyming slang. They are mostly eighteen, nineteen years old, and it’s strange for me to believe that they are so much younger than me when three years isn’t that great a difference. Perhaps I have the personality of a geezer. Perhaps I am simply old._

_I have been thinking about how last week would have been Adam’s birthday. He would have been twenty-two. Would you see how his mother’s doing sometime this month? If you go into my room, and look in my desk, there is that old copy of the_ Sword and the Stone _I’m so fond of. Adam used to borrow that book and then would forget that it wasn’t his, and doodle all over the margins. I used to get so cross with him about it, but honestly, he had a decent hand. I think that his mother might like to have another thing of his. There won’t be any new things from him, after all. And I do not need to keep it anymore._

_Edmund had told me about his brother in Singapore. Please send to Mr and Mrs Peterson my love--let them know I'll look after Edmund as best I can until we all come home. Singapore...How has all of this war spilled out of our little island to across the globe? It will only be a matter of time before we are to follow. Do you think I will go so far that I will not be under the sun the same time as you?_

_Why have I said so much? Boring, boring! Tell me more about what you’ve been learning, Ginnie, and the new radio programme that Mum likes so much--Desert Island Discs, or something like that? Dad, tell me something curious, something that’s been on your mind all week. That I may sleep through the night._

_Sending you my love and prayers,_

_Tommy_

_P.S. Is it true that Mum has given Sootball my pillow to sleep with on the windowsill? Has he become the favourite child already?_

_-_

That morning, Eloise is in a rush. Time has slipped from her, and she is running late to make it to the People’s Pantry. She barely has time to cram a bit of bread into her mouth before she kisses William on the cheek before he has the chance to turn his head to see her go, and like that she is gone. 

That afternoon, the pub is closed before dinner rush. William had promised Nicholas that he would help him build a dog house for his terrier after helping out at the Lady of the Lake. He and Wheeler’s youngest son are sawing wood in the empty pub as William points out the different tools and guides Nicholas’ hand. The nostalgia is both soft and prickling. 

“And then you make sure you clamp it well in place,” William says, as Nicholas positions the cut of wood that they will saw into precise shapes. “Here--” 

He taps Nicholas’ hand, before placing his own on top of the handsaw. He guides Nicholas in the correct sawing motions, gesturing the amount of pressure Nicholas ought to use. Nicholas nods with eagerness and impatience, as any fifteen-year-old boy would when he has a goal in mind.

“There you go,” William says. He lets go of the handsaw so that Nicholas can take it away. “That’s it. You’ve got it.”

“And then what?” says Nicholas. “How do I put it all together?”

“You’ve only just started on this part,” William says. “Go on. I’m watching you. I’ll let you know what to do next when it comes.” 

Ginnie is studying up in her bedroom, and at about four thirty in the afternoon, she comes downstairs to stretch her legs. Nicholas grunts when he gets a splinter in his thumb, and Ginnie hovers over him to help take it out. As William gets himself a drink of water, the air sirens ring. 

Ginnie and Nicholas look up sharply. William calmly sets down his glass and steps out of the pub to look to the sky in search of a German plane. He doesn’t see anything yet, but his heart hesitates to beat freely. 

“Nicholas,” William says, “Go home to your parents.”

“Is there a plane, Mr Schofield?” Nicholas asks. 

“There will be,” William says. “Now go.” 

Nicholas takes off his apron and hurries off down the street. Ginnie lingers at William’s side, tying her hair up. She casts a wary glance at the sky.

“Where should we go?” she says. “Should we go to the park?” 

He already sees a couple women taking children tightly by their hand and leading them to the park, where a shelter has been installed. It is a weary procession, worn down by false alarms and close calls, but no one is willing to be the fool who doesn’t take precautions on the only day the warnings come true. 

“Let’s wait until your mother comes,” he says. “We’ll go together.”

“She’s never going to leave,” Ginnie says. “Not if there is still work to be done.” 

William grimly agrees. He puts away his apron as Ginnie goes to the back room for the small box of important documents and photos that they have made the habit of keeping within arm’s reach. Edith had never found her old photo of Tommy after her London flat was bombed, after all. 

Then, a shadow passes over the street, and someone screams. 

_BANG_ \--

William is twenty-four, and his ears are ringing. His back is pressed against the mud and sandbags of the trench. The ground still shakes from the explosion, and there is something thick, wet, and hot all over William’s face. Nearby, the top of a soldier’s head has been blasted off, and greyish, bloody matter is smeared everywhere. 

_BANG_ \--

He is crawling through the mud, shaking hands covering his face as the shells around him tear up the earth and his fellow soldiers upon it. 

_BANG_ \--

He is thrown onto his back, dirt and stones drowning him. Dust coats his throat and his nose and his eyes can’t see. Blake is calling his name from six feet above, clawing to free William. William is the one who was buried alive, why is it then that Blake is the one who is buried still, today? 

“Papa!” 

Ginne squeezes his arm, and he is in the present again. He doesn’t remember making the decision to cover Ginnie’s head and huddle her against the stone corner of the pub, but his body has made the call already. The ground shakes, but the ceiling stays intact over their heads. Ginnie is crammed into the corner, holding her breath. 

William raises his head, his ears ringing with the explosions past and present. The pub is still standing, as are the locksmith and the butchers across the street. But he feels in his gut as if he is dangled upside down, a swooping, heavy sensation that clenches in his chest and tells him the world has been overturned. 

Before he can say anything to Ginnie--the piercing sound of strafing. He cowers over Ginnie once more, bracing himself for the sharp impact of machine gun bullets that would go through his body and inevitably into his daughter’s. He buries her into his chest, as if that would make a difference. Curse me, kill me, but don’t fucking touch her. 

Silence--then distant, frantic voices. William lets out a breath. His body shakes, and he wants to drive his fist into his thigh if only to stop it, but it wouldn’t. Ginnie’s eyes are squeezed shut; she pries them open when she hears her father still breathing. 

“Come with me,” William says to Ginnie. His voice is low and calm. He’s done this before. “Stay close.” 

He looks over his shoulder to make sure that she listens to him before edging out of the pub door. He turns to the sky again, distrusting the quiet, but he steps out onto the street anyway. Nearby, Mrs Moore is huddled just outside of her front door. 

“Wendy,” William says to Mrs Moore, who crouches on the cobblestone, her shaking hands pressed against her ears uselessly. He kneels in front of her immediately. “Have you been hit?” 

She says nothing, her eyes wide with shock and looking up towards the sky. William shakes her shoulder. 

“Wendy!” he says.

“I saw him,” she whispers.

She clutches her chest, from which her dead son’s identification tag hangs on a chain.

“Who?” William says. “Wendy, if anything hit you--”

“The pilot,” she says. “I could see him from here. He flew so low. He was grinning. He looked right at me and grinned.” 

“Mrs Moore?” Ginnie digs through a medical satchel. William doesn’t have time to ask her where she got it. “Let’s get you back inside.” 

“It’s him, it had to have been him,” she whispers. She squeezes Lee Moore’s name deep into her palm until it cuts into her skin, in her heart. “That’s why he looked at me and grinned. It was him who did it. It was him.” 

Ginnie shoots a pained look at William. William does not have the heart to return it. It has been two years. He still hears her scream of agony echo across the street one morning. 

“The fucking Jerry!” Wheeler has run out of his mechanic shop as well, face grim and ashen. “Schofield, Mrs Moore, you all right?” 

“Did you see it pass over?” another neighbour says. 

“Could have lobbed a potato and hit it, it was flying that low!”

Ginnie tries to coax Mrs Moore onto her feet. William swears he can still hear a child crying, but when he looks around he does not know where the sound is coming from.

“Schofield, where’s Nicky?” says Wheeler.

William turns to Wheeler.

“I sent him to go home,” he says. “He’s not with you?” 

“No,” Wheeler says. “I’ve been in the shop this whole time. He’s not in the pub?” 

William shakes his head, overwhelming guilt swelling immediately in his stomach as Wheeler pales. 

“He couldn’t have gone far,” he says desperately. “And the plane--Wendy, which way had the plane gone?” 

“He did it, I know he did,” Wendy moans. “My son, my son…” 

“What’s she talking about?” Wheeler says frantically. “Is she talking about Nicholas?” 

“ _\--been hit, and so has Friar Street!”_

The indecipherable, clamorous voices draw closer. William turns his head and sees with gut-releasing gratefulness that it is Nicholas sprinting down the street. Wheeler lets out a moan of relief as his teenage son sprints towards them, but the sentiment quickly gives way to panic when the closer Nicholas comes, the more visible are his cheeks stained with tears of distress. 

“Nicky, you scared the hell out of me!” Wheeler says. He snatches his son as if he is a frightened bird, pinning him in one place as Nicholas sputters for breath. “What happened? Where were you?” 

“The centre’s been bombed!” Nicholas cries. “The Arcade and the People’s Pantry have been hit!” 

Something tears open William’s chest, leaving nothing but a terrible, jagged hole. 

“Eloise,” he whispers. 

He runs. 

The People’s Pantry should only be several streets away, and it feels as if he will never make it there in time. He does not know if Ginnie is behind him. In this moment, he cannot stop to think about it. The last thing that William saw of his wife this morning was her hand waving from the door--before she shut it behind her, and had gone to be bombed. 

He sprints into the city centre. People stagger past him, clutching their heads and limbs and covered in dust. William has lived in this town all of his life and has grown up with everyone here, and he cannot recognise them when gritty white coats their faces and hair. The choking smell of smoke and debris thickens, and he hears all the more clearly the cries of pain. He should be used to it, but he no longer is, and he wonders if he ever was to begin with, trenches or not. 

He abruptly stops running, not because he has made it, but because the streets are chaos. The buildings that line Friar Street are hollowed out, the windows shattered and seas of splintered wood spilling onto the roads. People--his friends and neighbours--stagger through the chaos, bloodied. There are people lying on the ground and they are not moving. The sight knocks the air out of William’s lungs. 

“Eloise!” he cries out. “ELOISE!” 

He clambers his way through the mess. The People’s Pantry is just at the end of the street, just next to the Church of St Laurence, and he sees that an entire side of it has been blown off, revealing the unrecognisable skeleton of the British Restaurant where Eloise volunteers. Struggling neighbours would have been sitting down for tea and buns the moment the bomb shattered the building. Eloise would have been serving them with a stalwart smile and her hair hooked behind her ears. 

His heart beats so fast he thinks that he will die. 

“Sir!” A policeman is trying to run after him. “Sir, we need you to stay away while we clear the area!” 

William ignores him. The deeper he runs into the disaster, the less he is able to breathe. He passes bodies that are too small to be adults’. 

“Sir, you can’t go in there!” 

Two policemen grab William by the arms. William thrashes against them, knocking one of them back.

“My wife is in there!” he screams. “ _Please_!”

He struggles, but he is older than these policemen, and outnumbered, and they pin him back. He can’t find Eloise in the wreckage of the People’s Pantry, but he sees blood-coloured pavement and emergency responders crawling over fractured stone, digging people out. He remembers the taste of it. 

“You must stay back, Schofield!” says the officer. “We can’t have you getting hurt, don’t know if there are any bombs that hadn’t exploded yet in there--” 

“I know what I’m doing!” William says. “Don’t think for a moment that I don’t know, but Eloise is--” 

“Dad!” 

Ginnie’s voice shakes him to his core. He turns to see his daughter--sees that she is wearing a uniform, her satchel of first aid secured firmly at her waist and her sleeves already bunched up at her elbows. He sees a young woman, and for a moment, even though he should have never expected anything less, he does not recognise her. 

“It’s going to be okay,” Ginnie says. “Wait for me at Battle Hospital.” 

She has Eloise’s eyes, the only one of her siblings to inherit them. They have that same steely, relentless gaze that brings William back to earth. 

“I’ll find Mum,” she says. “I’ll take care of her.” 

And with that, she darts into the heart of destruction, and no one stops her. 

William waits.

Waits.

And waits. 

He does not open the pub for dinner. He cannot bring himself to, and no one protests. The streets of Reading are still smeared with dusted footprints. Many people of the town huddle at the door of Battle Hospital, even though it is February and no one had time to grab a scarf. The sun has already set, and there is only so much standing space at the entrance of the hospital. 

William doesn’t speak a word. His knees ache, and his back is tired, but he does not sit on the bench even when offered a seat. Every time a door opens, he looks up hurriedly, but no one comes with an answer, not his daughter, not his wife. 

He had been here waiting since they first brought victims into the hospital. Any face that was not beaten into a pulp he recognised--from the pub, from church, from the morning route to send parcels in the post. Some of them were unrecognisable, their faces smashed in and bloodied. Others had mangled limbs, moaning in pain. Many more had the sheets drawn over their heads. 

Then--in a moment of either mercy or torture, he had spotted Eloise being brought in on a stretcher. She was conscious, and William did not know if that was any better, because her face was screwed in pain and her leg looked crushed and gruesome. The soldier in William, the stiff upper lip, fell short. He cried out her name-- _Eloise, I’m here, I’m here_ \--but the nurses wheeled her into a room before he knew if she heard him. 

Ginnie has no time to talk. He can only watch her as she tucks her hair behind her ears and gets immediately to work, wheeling stretchers down the hall and attaching drips to patients. She does not look harried or out of place--she grits her teeth and plunges her hands into the war. He wants to catch her attention. He wants to demand to know how she has been sneaking with the Voluntary Aid Detachment all this time, even though if he is truly honest with himself, he has suspected this for a while but let it fall through the cracks. But his daughter is busy saving lives. The least he can do is wait. 

There is an ache that pulses through the throng who waits--some who know that their loved one was in the People’s Pantry or at the Arcade that afternoon, others who waited for them to come home from work but they never did and so they are left wondering where, where, where are they. Every now and then, the doctor will come out and quietly ask for the Cartwrights to come with him, or for Mr Garrison, or for Michael from the post office. They will shake as they follow the doctor behind closed doors, and when each of them eventually emerge, they look as if the bomb that fell through the Arcade had shattered their entire world, because it has. Those who wait teeter on the precipice--drawn to surround them and wrap them in love and sympathy, frozen out of terror of a loss that they do not, and desperately hope they will not, experience. 

William puts his arm around Mr Garrison as he sobs over his dead sister. Mr Garrison’s shoulders shake and his cries wrack his hunched body--he cries as if William is not here, and William does not know what to say, so he holds and holds and holds and eventually walks Mr Garrison home, because there is no one else waiting for him there anymore. 

He resolves that he will make a pot of tea for everyone still waiting at the hospital--and perhaps for any of the nurses who are parched. He does not want to return empty-handed. So he swings by his pub--how unnatural for it to be so empty at only nine in the night! He is on his own, and all he can hear in the pub is the sound of his own breathing. 

He fishes out all of the tea from the kitchen cupboard. It will be a weaker brew, and they would have to wait another week before they can get any more, but it is everything that is left. He sets the kettle on the hob to boil water and stacks all the teacups that they have into a basket. It is quiet, and he wishes desperately that Edith or Tommy are here to help. He would need at least two pots of tea for everyone waiting at the hospital. He doesn’t know if he can carry it all on his own. 

One of the cups topples over from the shelf. He automatically reaches to catch it, but he has only his wooden hand left. It clatters uselessly on the falling cup before the cup falls to the floor, shattering. William curses. He bends low to pick up the broken pieces. The kettle whistles shrilly. He tosses the shards into the bin and realises that now he is one cup short from giving everyone tea. 

It shouldn’t matter. He could run a cup under the tap. Or, he is sure that there are cups at the hospital, and no one would accuse him. The kettle is whistling. It shouldn’t matter. But--

He tears his wooden hand off of his wrist and hurls it out of the kitchen. It hurtles into the living room wall, leaving a skid mark on the wallpaper. He screams behind his teeth, choking back all the curses he wants to pierce himself with in relish. 

Tea. He sucks in a deep breath. Tea--he has one thing left he can do. He stumbles to the hob to take the kettle off. It is heavy--he had tried to boil as much water as possible. But he only has one hand, and when he tries to use his stump to tip the kettle over, to pour the hot water into the teapot, it burns his skin and he spills water onto the counter. He slams the kettle back onto the hob. 

“ _Yo_ _u worthless piece of shit_!” he screams. 

He sinks to the kitchen floor and buries his face in his hand. His wife is in agony. Ginnie is trying to save lives. Edith is working behind the doors that dictate this very war. Tommy is about to die, every single day. And he cannot even make a fucking pot of tea.

His chest heaves. He is supposed to be the man of the family, the protector and provider. He whimpers in bed while Eloise is the one who guards him through the night. He stands in the sidelines while his children dive headfirst into a war to protect him. His wife could be dying for all he knows, and he hasn’t even both hands to clasp hers in between. He is supposed to shield his family from harm and lead them with grace and goodness, and he is nothing but a failure. 

A yell rips out of William’s throat, a sound so guttural and feral that he doesn’t feel human. How did he ever have the gall to be angry at God for not protecting his children? Did William believe that he could do any better? Well, this is the answer--William loves his family with every ounce of his being, and he cannot save them. He cannot save them. 

“Please,” he whispers. “I can’t do this.” 

He stays there, slumped against the counter, battered and tired, holding his stump gingerly to his chest. He wants his son and daughter to come back home. He wants his wife to have never been to the People’s Pantry. He wants Ginnie to be blissfully ignorant. He wants, wants, wants. 

“I can’t do this,” he pleads. “Not on my own. Please.” 

He closes his eyes, and for a moment he can almost imagine that he is a child, because that is what he deeply wishes. A child who could bury his face into a parent’s chest and believe in a tomorrow, believe that he is not worthless. He swears he can feel warm hands cup his face. The warmth is soft, soothing--when he opens his eyes, he realises that he has lifted his head from his hand. 

With each slow breath, his spirit weeps, and then gradually quiets. His breath evens, and he manages to push himself off of the ground, retrieve his prosthetic, and put it back on his wrist. There is no buzz in his head, no numbing, deafening fog like the gas that used to choke them out. Just a rhythmic beating of his heart, so that each step and each movement could match its pace. Keep going, a little longer. A hand holds his as he pours the hot water into the teapot, fastens a cloth over the basket. There you go, that’s it, says the quiet. You’ve got it. I’m still watching you. I’m still right here.


	5. i'm never afraid with you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do your eyes deceive you? Have I bumped the chapter count of this story up once more so that this is actually the second-to-last chapter and this story isn't finished yet? No, your eyes do not deceive you. I have once again done it. The next chapter will REALLY be the last chapter, but I shan't say I promise because...goodness only knows. Some sharks will be jumped at this rate. 
> 
> Thank you for all those who have been continuing to read this story, despite its LOOSE association with 1917 at this point. Thanks for your patience--this chapter was a bit logistically frustrating to put together, and I hope that it is presentable now. A special shoutout of thanks to the Longfic Lads who have been cheering me on as I write, and whose own stories keep me excited and invigorated through the week. If you haven't already read these great works, then please check them out: WafflesRisa's "Pick a man. Bring your kit," Ealasaid and Pavuvu's "between the crosses" series (they just finished up a longfic!), and scientistsinistral's expansions to this series--"true lover's knot" and "our dying soldier lives" which can be found if you click on 'there and back again'! Couldn't have done it without you lovely ones. 
> 
> Chapter title, epigraph, and eventual reference is taken from A. A. Milne's poem "Us Two."

> _ "Let's frighten the dragons," I said to Pooh. _
> 
> _ "That's right," said Pooh to Me. _
> 
> _ "I'm not afraid," I said to Pooh, _
> 
> _ And I held his paw and I shouted "Shoo! _
> 
> _ Silly old dragons!"- and off they flew. _
> 
> _ "I wasn't afraid," said Pooh, said he, _
> 
> _ "I'm never afraid with you." _

Does it never end, then? This? 

__

-

__

_ 11 February 1943 _

__

_ Dear everyone, _

_ Please write back as soon as you can. I’ve heard about Reading. I don’t have access to any telephone and I’m going to send a letter to Edith, just to be sure. But I need to hear back from you, as soon as possible. Tell me everything that’s happened to you. I need to know you’re still here.  _

_ I love you all. I love you more than anything else on this earth. Please write to me soon.  _

__

_ Tommy _

__

-

They bury their friends in the churchyard. There is no time to rest and little breath left to shed any more tears. As the caskets lower into the soil, William buries bits and pieces of home, here in Reading where home should be.

Eloise cannot make it to the funerals. William and Ginnie dress in the same dark clothes they wore for their grandfather’s funeral to mourn their friends. He opens the Book of Common Prayer to the Burial Rites on the first try. 

He tries to remember every detail. He commits to memory the chill emanating from the frozen soil as they lower each killed friend into the grave. The hymns reverberate in his ribcage and he wants to shut the door of his heart so that they echo long after they leave the church. He tries to hold fast to the sound of dirt falling onto the casket, the priest pronouncing Alice Marleigh’s and Abigail Jenkins’ names among the saints, Alice’s grown daughter Ellen choking out promises to stay strong--but his senses are numb and his mind is far away and before he can drag himself back into the moment, the last new memory with old friends are gone. 

He could lose his children to this new war. He had thought, naively, that he is past the age of losing friends to it too.

As Ginnie goes to comfort Ellen and her sister, William breaks from the crowd and wanders through the cemetery. He recognises nearly every name etched on the stones. Some are familiar in passing--relatives of the Chapmans that he has never met, family of Eloise’s brother-in-law. Others, like George Tatlock’s, he still remembers the smell of the overturned spring soil when the gravedigger prepared his resting place. He remembers watching George’s retreating back for the last time without thinking that he ought to have said goodbye. 

William crouches next to Tatlock’s grave. Beside them are the small gravestones of his children, nestled into the dirt like stepping stones. Isabel Tatlock still keeps them tidy--she has made paper flowers and lined the graves with inked petals. They droop in the cold, but William can make out the dates of the newspaper from the smudged ink. It is from four days ago. 

How long has it been since he had stood at George’s freshly dug grave, neither the first nor the last that Reading had lost to the Great War? He does not know why, but he realises he had imagined the fresh, overturned dirt to still sit thick and bare before the gravestones. Now, it is flush with new grass, covering up the grave as new skin would stretch over a wound. 

There is a cemetery near Ecoust, Tommy had told him. I tried to look for Tom Blake.

William’s heart swells until it aches. 

“Dad?” 

Ginnie has found him among the winding paths. She hitches up her skirt, careful not to step over where the casket may be, but with all the grass that has grown over it, it is anyone’s guess. Either way, Tatlock’s bones do not protest. 

“You all right?” she says. 

William heaves in a deep breath. Ginnie takes his hand--the cold is making his knuckles ache. 

“I just needed a breath of air,” he says. “Getting a bit crowded over there.” 

Ginnie crouches next to him. She gingerly fingers the paper flowers beside Tatlock’s headstone. William is suddenly seized with the desire to ask her why she never shied away from Tatlock, even after he frightened her. It seems, however, that it is not the place to ask about one dead friend at another friend’s funeral. 

“Do you still have that little ragdoll that Mrs Marleigh had made you when you were four?” he says. 

Ginnie smiles wryly. 

“Tommy had thrown it in the river years ago,” she says. 

“Sorry, what?” says William. “What happened again? Had you fought?”

“No,” she says. “He was just being an idiot. He and Adam Samuels stole her when they were seven. They wanted to reenact the Lady of Shalott.”

William cracks a smile. Now he remembers Ginnie overturning her bedsheets in search of the doll that she still liked to sleep with as a twelve-year-old. She eventually deduced that of her siblings, Tommy was the one who tried to change the subject every time she asked if anyone had seen old Rosie, and cornered him. Tommy had insisted that he had no idea where the doll had gone, and eventually confessed when she shoved him in the wardrobe and used skipping rope to bind the doors shut while he screeched from inside. Edith got caught in the crossfire because she had friends over who were horrified by the sound of her younger siblings’ thumping and howling, and the shouting match between all three of them could be heard by everyone on the street. 

William would have never thought that he would miss the days that his three children would actively try to maim each other, and yet. 

“You were furious with him for a good week,” he says. 

“Oh, longer,” says Ginnie. “I just didn’t show it in front of you or Mum after a certain point.”

“What did you do to your brother, young lady?” 

“Every time he borrowed a book from the library, I would read the ending and then spoil it for him. I kept it up for a good month. After a while it was just funny.”

William stares flabbergasted at Ginnie, who shrugs.

“I loved old Rosie,” she says. “Mrs Marleigh had stitched a little shawl for her. And she made sure to give her brown eyes, because I always said I wanted blue eyes like Edith. Young lady--she always told me--you have your mother’s eyes, and you best not take that for granted.” 

“She had a point,” William says. “She always liked to shower you with love.” 

Ginnie smiles, her gaze faraway. 

“She truly did,” she says. “Damn. Now I’m cross with Tommy all over again for stealing the doll.”

She turns her face away from William, furtively wiping her eyes with her shoulder. 

“Did you know that Mrs Marleigh was the one who nudged your mother and me together?” William says. 

Ginnie looks incredulously at William.

“No idea,” she says. “Honest?” She laughs to herself, brushing her flyaway curls from her forehead. “Were you two impossible lovebirds?” 

“For your information, Alice barely had any work cut out for her. She set the stage just right to get the second act going.” 

Ginnie chuckles. William could have sworn that he had told his children about this, but perhaps he is mistaken. There are probably hundreds of other stories that he has let slip from his fingers. But he relishes this moment, of swapping stories with Ginnie of his and Eloise’s old friend, as if she had died a merciful death in her sleep, or after running the good race, and not because the war had swooped down and strafed her on Wolseley Street. 

William closes his eyes. There must be something on his face, because before he knows it, Ginnie takes William’s face in her mittened hands and presses a kiss against his cheek. A lump rises in his throat, and he doesn’t have it in him to force it down. 

“Shall we go home?” she says. 

William nods. She stands up and helps him on his feet. His knees creak underneath him, and he fails to hide his wince. His body feels heavy. These wars are making him fall apart, he thinks. Or perhaps he is simply getting old. 

-

When William tells Eloise about Alice Marleigh’s funeral, he unspools his memories of that day. The more he unravels, the more he realises how it had tightly wound around him, leaving lines along his skin, his mind, until it bulges and pales like a finger tangled in embroidery. He releases it, and the consequences of love and grief flood back into him like blood until he both aches and numbs. 

Eloise sits back in her chair and closes her eyes, as if she will weave his words into her own mind and dream of this in her sleep, to live it out one way or another. By the end of it, she presses her sleeve against her eyes, and her lips tremble. 

“It seems impossible now,” William says to her. He repeats this to himself again and again, as if to speak it into being. Repeats it until he is out of breath. “But we’re going to go on.” 

They must. 

-

Eloise’s right leg is badly broken, and they should consider themselves lucky. If she had gone back to the kitchen like she was intending, before Isabel had stopped her to listen to a joke that Chapman was telling, she would have undoubtedly been crushed to death under two storeys. Instead, she had been thrown back, and her leg was pinned underneath the rubble. She will likely have a limp at the end of all this, the surgeon says, maybe even need a cane. Count yourselves lucky. 

Eloise’s arms shake as she manoeuvres with crutches. When she faces the stairs up to the flat at the Lady of the Lake for the first time, she pushes the crutches into William’s arms and inches herself up each step, sitting on the step and using her left leg to push herself up one at a time. 

“Let me,” William says. 

He rests the crutches against the wall and reaches down to help Eloise. She waves him away.

“I’m managing,” she says. “Don’t worry about me.” 

William blinks. Eloise moves a millimeter a minute, gingerly keeping her heavily cast leg aloft so that it won’t jostle or accidentally hit against the stairs. He casts a carefully measured glance to Ginnie, who silently slips out of the main entrance of the pub to enter the flat from a different fire escape. 

“Eloise,” William says. “I can carry you.”

“Not with your back, you can’t,” Eloise says. 

William furrows his brow, but she doesn’t notice. She accidentally lowers her leg too close to the step. She jostles it and cries out in pain. William swiftly climbs up to her place and wraps his arm around her waist to hoist her up.

“Put me  _ down _ ,” Eloise says. “I said I could handle it.” 

William says nothing. He steadies himself before hooking his other arm under her knees. She is right--his back isn’t prepared for this sort of work, but his feet are steady and it is only a flight of stairs. He inches his way to the top, where Ginnie has already unlocked and opened the door. Eloise says nothing either as he carries her into their bedroom. He sets her on the reading chair by the window, props her leg up with the trunk at the foot of their bed with extra sheets, and then squeezes her hand so tightly that he might break those bones as well. 

“Keep that up and I’ll have a hand like yours too,” she says.

She offers William a smile, but it falters when she sees the look on his face. 

“I’m fine, Will,” she says. “Don’t be so cross.” 

“It isn’t funny,” he says. 

“Look who’s talking. As if you hadn’t pranked me with your wooden hand about a thousand times--”

“It’s not funny when it’s you,” William says sharply. 

Eloise draws back, visibly stung. 

“It was a joke,” she says, the colour rising in her cheeks. “Bloody hell, Will, can’t we be grateful for good enough?”

“I nearly lost you,” William says. His blood runs cold. “You could have been killed. You could have lost your leg entirely. Do you know what it’s like to nearly lose your wife in a matter of seconds?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” she snaps. 

William opens his mouth, then clamps it shut. Eloise draws her shawl tightly around her shoulders, her jaw set stiffly. Humbled, William sinks onto the edge of the bed, tangled up in his emotions without any clue of where they lead or end. 

“I’m sorry, Eloise,” he says quietly. 

She presses her lips into a thin line. Before she is compelled to respond, the bedroom door opens. Ginnie comes in with the crutches. 

“I’ll leave them here,” Ginnie says,

She leans them against the nightstand. She looks from her father to her mother, noting the obvious tension but electing not to comment on it. 

“Mr and Mrs Wheeler are going to come round with the groceries later,” she says. “And Edith is going to call later in the afternoon today, before we open for dinner. We can try to bring the telephone up here.” 

“Edith?” says Eloise. “You haven’t told her, have you?”

Ginnie furrows her eyebrows.

“She was the first person I told,” she says. 

“Why did you go and do something like that, Ginnie?” Eloise says. “Now she’s going to worry and she already has to work such late hours, she probably is interrupting her work time to call and she could get in trouble--” 

“What are they going to do, sack her?” says Ginnie. “Churchill’s cabinet would fall apart. They wouldn’t manage to scratch their own bum without her around.”

“She has enough on her plate as it is,” Eloise says. “You shouldn’t have told her what happened, Ginnie.”

“You’re joking,” Ginnie says harshly. “She would have heard on the newspapers what happened in Reading anyway. Better to tell her right away than make her assume the worst.” 

“If she comes running back to Reading because she’s worried--”

“Then that would be wonderful,” Ginnie says. “Ever since she married we haven’t seen enough of her.” 

“But--”

“I’m not arguing with you about this,” Ginnie says swiftly. “What’s done is done. After I get lunch ready, I’ll be going. Got the day shift at the hospital today.”

Eloise’s shoulders stiffen. She reaches to take Ginnie’s wrist, but Ginnie has already pulled away before Eloise can touch her. 

“Your father needs help at the Lady of the Lake,” Eloise says. “He can’t keep it up on his own--”

“That’s a different tune you’re whistling from before,” Ginnie says, she frowns, but only when she has turned away from Eloise already. “I’ll be back sometime after seven.” 

Eloise makes a sound of protest, but Ginnie has left the room. This leaves William and Eloise alone again, in a strange tension that he has not felt from her before. He itches to ask her what Ginnie had meant just now, but he feels in the back of his chest that the time is not right. 

“That’s the first place that anyone would aim for,” Eloise says. “The hospitals.” 

She picks at her cuticles, leaving strips of raw pink along her fingers. 

“They won’t,” William says. 

They usually go for the railways, is what he is about to say, but he realises that it would give Eloise no comfort. Eloise draws blood from her fingers, tearing at the skin mindlessly. William stands up from the bed and walks to her side. He kneels next to her chair, so that even though she keeps her gaze downcast she must look at him. He takes her hand firmly but gently. 

“Eloise,” he says. “Ginnie will be all right.” 

Eloise moves to tug her hand away from William’s, but she gives up halfway. There is a knock at the back door, the entrance to the flat outside of the pub. He can hear Ginnie receive the guests, and Wheeler’s voice enter the flat. 

“Would you like to see Jacob and Delia?” William says. “They helped us stop by the shops this morning.”

“Go ahead first,” Eloise says quietly. “Give me a moment?” 

William hesitates. She gives him a gentle nudge towards the door, so he acquiesces. Wheeler and his wife are in the kitchen, unloading some of the groceries into the refrigerator while Ginnie counts out the pounds to pay them back. Even Nicholas is there, setting the lonely eggs onto a dishrag on the counter so that they do not roll around. William puts a hand on Wheeler’s shoulder in thanks as Wheeler crouches to fit the small parcel of bacon onto a shelf.

“I can’t thank you enough,” William says. 

“Don’t be silly,” Wheeler says. “Lesser men have done more. Here--” He hands William back his ration book. “Is the missus back home then?” 

“She’s resting,” William settles with. “She can come and say hello in a bit--Ginnie, get some tea ready, won’t you?” 

“So what had happened to her?” Nicholas asks. “Was she right under the bomb then, when it fell? Oof--” He grunts when Wheeler pokes him hard on the back of the head. “I mean--is she doing well?” 

“I really could have sworn I taught you some tact at some point,” Wheeler says.

“He’s better than his brother,” Ginnie says, ruffling Nicholas’ hair. Nicholas is torn between scowling and basking in the attention of an older woman. 

“I’ve brought a couple of recipes I’ve jotted down, William,” Delia says as Ginnie pours them cups of tea. “Just something I put together--they’re quick and easy, if you need to cook something quick before work, or before you have a shift at the hospital, Ginnie. Until Eloise is back on her feet again.” 

She hands William a stack of recipe cards that could easily cover two years’ worth of meals. He takes them, flummoxed by the generosity. 

“Thank you,” he stammers. “I don’t--you didn’t need to. I hadn’t asked you to do all this.” 

“Well, of course,” Delia says. “God knows that you hardly ask for anything in the first place, Mr Schofield.” 

She says it so bluntly that William almost feels embarrassed to be taken aback, especially when neither Ginnie nor Wheeler seem to come to his defence. Before William can come up with a response, Nicholas cuts in obliviously.

“Mr Schofield?” he says. “Do you think you could still teach me how to make the doghouse?” 

“Nicky, remember what I said about it being a bad time?” Wheeler says. 

“I’m just curious,” Nicholas mumbles. 

William cannot help but crack a smile. In the same way that young children could tumble from a tree and jump right back onto their feet, he misses the resilience. War has come to Reading and is here to stay, but there are dogs who still need a place of their own in the garden. 

“I’ve got to get going, Dad,” Ginnie says, wiping her hands on the dish towel. “I’ve got sandwiches made for you and Mum. I’ll be back before closing time if you need me.”

“You’ll be exhausted,” says William. “You’re going straight to bed.”

“Straight to bath, then to bed, if we are going to be pedantic. Thank you again, Mr and Mrs Wheeler. You too, Nicky. Give Ben a bit of hell for me, okay?” 

“He told me in his last letter to tell you that you still owe him fifty shillings,” Nicholas pipes up.

“He’s a liar and a thief. I only owe him thirty-five.” 

She waves goodbye to the Wheelers, scowls at William when he shoots a questioning stare at her, and hurries out of the flat with a scarf around her neck. William cracks open a tin of Eloise’s biscuits to offer to his guests. 

“How  _ are  _ you going to manage the pub, though, Schofield?” says Wheeler. “Until Eloise can work again--the Watery Wench is the most popular pub in Reading, do you need an extra hand?” 

“I could use a full set of them to start with,” William says. “But no. I’ll be all right. I can handle it.” 

Wheeler shoots William a look of scepticism, which William takes personally. 

“It’s my pub,” William says. “If I can’t run my own pub, what good can I do?”

“D’you think I can work at the pub?” Nicholas says. “I could stay up and get people drinks.” 

“Have you forgotten that you already work in our shop, Nicky?” says Wheeler. 

“Pubs open longer,” Nicholas says petulantly. “And then I can save up to send Ben a mouth organ for his birthday. You always tell me I need to be wily and resourceful if I want some pocket money.” 

Wheeler shoots William a look of amused exasperation. 

“Well, there you have it,” says Wheeler. 

“I’m fine,” William says, his tone a little harder this time. “I don’t need any help. Everyone is so busy anyway, and you’ve already done enough for us.” 

Wheeler raises his eyebrows, but it is Delia who cuts in. 

“Begging your pardon, Schofield,” she says. “But every single one of us needs help. Don’t believe for a second that you’re above it. Oh, these biscuits are bang on.” 

She nibbles appreciatively on the biscuits, as if she hadn’t just called William out mercilessly once more and leaving him wordless. He does not know how to believe her. 

“Dad, it’s already ten in the morning,” Nicholas says. 

“Right you are,” Wheeler says, checking his wristwatch. “You need anything else, Schofield, give us a shout. Nicky and I are opening shop later today, but we’ll be back sometime past noon?”

“Where will you be?” says William.

“Helping clean up Friar Street,” says Wheeler. “The place is still a mess. The entire street crunches when you walk on it.” 

“Do you need any help?” says William. 

“Of course we could use it, mate,” says Wheeler. “You want to come along before you open for lunch, then?” 

William wants to roll up his sleeves, see the work of his hand actually achieve something for his fellow countrymen. He wants to shake the hand of the fellows whose pleasure yachts brought his son back home from Dunkirk beach, and somehow cleaning the ripped up streets of Reading feels as close as he can get. 

But he thinks of Eloise waiting in the bedroom, who scratches the skin off of her cuticles and is convinced that their daughter will be bombed today. He can’t bear to leave her alone so afraid while her forehead shines with nervous sweat, and all the protests from earlier of climbing the stores on her own long forgotten. William doesn’t remember the last time she looked so defeated, perhaps because she has never been defeated in the first place. Eloise has fought tooth and nail in every challenge, and came out with her head held high and her shoulders straight and her eyes fixed on the victory. She has never before been buried alive under rubble, screaming the names of friends and neighbours too dead to hear. She had never crawled on hands and knees for her life until now. 

“Maybe when Ginnie can stay home,” he says. “Take care, Wheeler.” 

The Wheelers leave the flat, after making William promise that he will call upon them if he ever needs anything else. He does not know if he wants to take them on that offer, but Delia looks him unmercifully in the eyes when he tells them that he will. The conviction makes him second guess himself. 

He takes a cup of tea and the remaining biscuits to Eloise. When he opens the door, he sees her watching the grey sky out the window, knuckles white as she grips the armrests. She quickly diverts her attention to the first book she can reach for from her seat when he walks in. 

“There he is again,” she says brightly. “Wheelers all right, then?” 

William smiles at her, but he can feel it stop short of his eyes. His chest twinges, because he of all people would understand, and yet Eloise pretends as if she isn’t the least bit afraid. She uses the crutches for her shattered leg to prop her proud chin up. What way can he tell her that if she screams in fear, if she weeps out of pain, if she runs away from the trenches and bombardments with sick running down her dress because she can’t help it, he would never scorn her? 

He sets the tea down on the windowsill and sits next to her. He can see the grey of the sky reflected in her eyes, and even though he knows there isn’t one out there, he sees the ghost of a bomber in her gaze. 

“Very well,” he says. His tone is light. “Delia is fond of your biscuits, by the way.” 

William, his mind scorns. You damn hypocrite. 

-

Tommy’s letter arrives--it is short and frantic. It punches William in the gut to read it. He almost neglects to show Eloise, because he knows that it will distress her to know that Tommy is afraid for them, but a mother’s intuition is frustratingly accurate. She can tell simply by the look on William’s face as he shuffles through the envelopes in the morning that one of them is from Tommy.

“What has he said?” she says. Ginnie is helping her out of her nightdress. Eloise fumbles to pull on her blouse, resting her broken leg on the stool while Ginnie clips on Eloise’s stocking on the other leg. “Is he going to be sent away?” 

“No,” William says. “He--well, I don’t know. He did not say.” 

“I want to see what he’s written,” Eloise says. 

When William hesitates, her face loses what little colour it had regained when she came back from the hospital.

“What’s happened?” she says. 

“He’s heard about Reading,” William says quickly. “That’s all. He’s not hurt, Eloise. He’s okay. But he must have been frightened--” 

Eloise holds out a hand wordlessly to William. William hesitates before giving her the letter. She nearly tears it in half as she unfolds it, and Ginnie hangs over her to read over her shoulder. 

“Bloody hell,” Eloise says tiredly. 

She sinks down onto the stool. Ginnie takes the letter from her hand to take a closer look at it. She walks to the window, reading it in the grim and cloudy light. Her hand shakes ever so slightly. 

“Of course he would hear about it,” Ginnie says. 

“I was hoping that it wouldn’t reach him,” Eloise says.

“That’s foolish,” Ginnie says. She folds the letter back in halves and tucks it safely in her pocket. “I’ll write to him and tell him what’s happened. I’ll send it out today, too. He’ll get it within the week.” 

William takes Eloise’s left shoe from underneath the bed and fits it onto Eloise’s foot. As he holds her ankle he feels every tense vein and muscle. Eloise fidgets with her worn shawl. Her face is paler than usual from the pain of her leg, and she worries her bottom lip until the skin is tattered. The sight of her makes William’s stomach sink. 

“Don’t tell Tommy about my leg,” she says. “Or about Mrs Marleigh. It’s too much to grieve alone.”

Ginnie stares at Eloise.

“Pardon?” she says. 

“Tell him everyone is all right,” she says. “He doesn’t need to know more.”

“You’re bloody joking,” Ginnie says. “You want to  _ lie _ ?” 

“He has enough to worry about,” Eloise says. “You know how he is. He will worry himself sick and no one there will help him when he does. No--don’t tell him. Say that we’re all safe. I mean it, Ginnie.” 

William can see the protests swell in Ginnie’s chest, until her fists shake. 

“He’d want to know about this,” she says. “He’d want to know about Mrs Marleigh, too. She was like family. When I heard she was killed, I nearly--” 

“Virginia,” Eloise demands. “Tell me that you understand.” 

Ginnie clamps her mouth shut. She grunts in acknowledgement before sweeping out of the bedroom immediately. William purses his thin lips. He turns to his wife, but Eloise won’t look him in the eyes. He doesn’t know how to decide if his wife or his daughter may need him most at this moment. 

“Eloise,” he says. 

“It’ll frighten him,” she says. “We’ve already gone and worried Edith. I could tell how stressed she was over the phone about her old mother. Ginnie shouldn’t have told her. That girl--nothing will stop her to think things through.”

“What are you afraid of?” William asks suddenly. 

Eloise turns abruptly to him, her eyes wide in shock. He does not know where the question had come from, only that in this moment, he wants to know the answer. He thinks that she needs to know it, as well. 

“I’m talking about Tommy,” Eloise says. “Not myself.” 

No, William wants to say. You are not. 

“I will not burden him,” Eloise says, as if she is the only one in the room. “He has enough. He’s had enough.”

Something settles uneasily in William’s stomach, but he does not know why. He feels guilty if he agrees--he feels complicit if he doesn’t. He ought to say something, but she has answered his question without realising it, and the answer unexpectedly stings. 

But she is right. They have to protect their son. He is the one who has to fight in the war and he might be the only one who they can protect at all. 

William excuses himself to prepare breakfast for her. He closes the bedroom door behind him and, as he suspects, sees Ginnie waiting in the kitchen. 

She is pacing, her jaw set stiffly, and she does not look at William when he walks in. In her hand is Tommy’s letter. Her tense grip wrinkles the paper. William makes his way past her to fill the kettle with water. He could hear the seams of her mouth straining, fit to burst. He quietly sets the kettle on the hob, and waits for his daughter to do what she needs. 

As he lights a match, she explodes like a powder keg. 

“I’m writing the truth to Tommy,” she says. “I’m not going to lie to him. Mum’s being foolish.” 

William takes in a deep breath. Ginnie’s declaration gets tangled in all the other emotions in his chest, snagging his nerves along the way. 

“Tell him the truth of Mrs Marleigh, but If it is about Mum, then you will tell him what she asks of you,” William says. “This is for your brother.” 

“ _ Rubbish _ ,” she spits. “I’m not keeping secrets from him. He deserves to know the truth about what’s going on at home. It’s our family. He’s still part of this family.”

“No one is saying that he isn’t,” William says tersely. 

“Well, aren’t we acting like it!” Ginnie says. To her credit, she keeps her voice constrained, although it threatens to overflow out of the kitchen. “I don’t want Tommy coming back home and feeling like--feeling like he isn’t part of the family anymore because he doesn’t know what’s gone on--”

“So you’re an expert on how Tommy will feel after coming back from war, then?” William says. “You know what’s best for him?” 

“And you automatically do?” she shoots back. “He’s not  _ you, _ Dad.” 

Frustration that only his middle child has ever been able to tap surges in William. His right fist shakes. 

“You want to know why Tommy didn’t want to come home on his first leave?” he says. “Do you understand why he hasn’t come back at all in the past four years?” 

Ginnie’s eyes widen, livid. William’s chest pricks with bitter vindication that he is finally listened to. 

“It’s because--”

“It’s because he doesn’t want to burden us!” Ginnie cuts him off. William jerks back as if she has struck him. “Just look at the letters he writes to us--only telling us about the happy things because he thinks that’s all that we can handle, that’s all that we know. God knows what’s really on his mind when he writes about Adam Samuels, about Ollie Peterson, giving away books as if he will never read them again and talking about the bloody sun. You all say he has enough to worry about? Sure he does, and he won't even tell that to us.” She wipes her lips with the back of her fist, as if she is about to take a thousand hits. “He thinks he’d be a burden to us because we’re living idyllic lives full of weddings! And pub fundraisers! And stray cats having kittens right on our windowsill garden! But that’s because that’s all we tell him, not about the bombs, not about the air sirens and funerals and rubbish. He thinks he will only bring us down so he’ll keep silent and swallow down everything until it destroys him. You’re not the only one who understands him, Dad. I know my brother. I  _ know  _ him.” 

She breathes heavily as if she has just run across the trenches herself, demanding him to call off his plan of action. William can only stare at her, a cold and numbing fire searing in his chest that neither anger nor conviction can easily explain. 

“What good will it do?” he says icily. “Worrying him when he can do nothing about it, when he is so far away? Just like you said, he’s in some depot where he’s being trained to get killed, he has to grieve his friends, he has to worry where his grave will end up being, and you want to make him bear this as well?”

“Say that you go through with this!” Ginnie retorts. “Say that you tell him everything is fine, there’s nothing to worry about back home! Is it any better for him to come back and find out that we were hiding everything from him this whole time? Or does Mum think she can hide her limp from him for the rest of her life?”

“Virginia!” 

William’s voice shakes the dust, but Ginnie doesn’t flinch. She raises her chin so that her fiery gaze overshadows him. 

“You have no idea what it could do to Tommy,” he says. 

“You think he can’t handle it?”

“That’s not--”

“Because I’m telling you that he can!” she says. “He can and he will because then he will have us, and that’s our  _ mum _ !” 

“You don’t know what it’s like!” William snaps. Ginnie’s nostrils flare, but he pays it no heed. “You have no idea what it’s like to be away from your family, to worry about them and not be able to do anything for them except be a burden!” 

“I don’t?” Her voice swells with untamed passion. “I’ve done this twice, Dad! I’m doing this right now! You and Mum aren’t the only ones worried about Tommy. You weren’t the only one who was scared to death for Edith. Mum wasn’t the only one who was scared for you when you were gone the first time. I was scared for you, and I didn’t know who you were the first time I saw you.” 

The words stab right through William’s chest. All the warmth and life drains out from the hole it creates. Ginnie jerks back, as if the fire of her own words has singed her as well. 

“Dad,” Ginnie says uneasily. 

“No,” he says. “You’re right. You know more than I give you credit for.” 

He wishes that she never knew it, but she was born into it. She was born without her father to welcome her, the only one of his children to do so. She learned to walk and smile and speak without her father to kiss her in joy. Of course there are so many things that he doesn’t know she knew. He wasn’t even there when she began to learn at all.

“I think Tommy should know more than what you give him credit for too,” Ginnie says. “You’ve never softened the truth from him before.”

“I hadn’t,” William echoes.

He unearths the William from nearly three decades ago, the one who cursed himself for being the source of Eloise’s insomnia and anxiety while he crouched in the muddy trenches. He feels a mixture of pity and shame for the young and long-ago William who was buried in mud and shame, unable to shake off the guilt of betraying Eloise in favour of serving his own sense of duty and debt to his fellow countrymen, guilt that in retrospect he oughtn’t to have carried. He tries to do for Tommy what he wishes had been done for his past self. But Tommy is not William; the past cannot be changed, and he does not need to. He is forgiving himself and Eloise each day--the past does not need to change. 

“I don’t know what’s good for him,” he says. Ginnie is right--he reads his son’s letters and  _ knows _ that it is only a shade of his son’s vast mind, and with each pleasant word that bandages a deep, secret wound Tommy drifts further and further from his reach. Home is becoming unattainable to Tommy in its idolised perfection, untouched utopia that Tommy does not think he will belong after dirt coats his skin and other soldiers’ blood stains his uniform, after he has said and done things he never thought he would do. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I know,” Ginnie says. Her eyes shine dangerously. “I know we ought to be strong and keep carrying on, I know that I ought to keep a stiff upper lip, that Tommy’s got it worse and has enough on his plate.” Her voice shakes dangerously, and the tip of her nose reddens as the tender, desperate child still inside speaks for her. “I need to do my part and keep my head up and keep going no matter how hard it is, but--I’m so scared. I’m so lonely.” 

If Ginnie’s first statement had shot a hole through William’s chest, her broken confession destroys him. Ginnie’s face crumples and she buries it in her hands. In two steps he closes the gap between them. His arms envelope her; even though she is grown she is still so small, he could hide her behind him, within him. 

“I want my sister and brother,” Ginnie weeps. 

William holds her tight. He doesn’t know what to say, and she does not ask him to say anything. All she asks for is for her father to hold her as he used to, as if he had always been there to hold her in the crook of his arm when she was just born. He smooths her hair and longs to take on every fear, every sorrow that weighs on her shoulders and carry them for her. He wishes he could take back the time he had left her to grieve alone, trying to stay strong for their family while William turned his attention elsewhere. Instead he stays still, and misses her siblings fiercely alongside her. 

“I’m still here,” he whispers while Ginnie sobs. “Darling, I’m here with you. I’ve got you. I’m here.” 

She rests her head against his shoulder, and he believes himself when he says it. Eventually, in the quiet of the kitchen, her tears subside. She eventually pulls away, wiping her eyes furiously with the elbow of her sleeve. She does not run away anymore with a cursory word of acknowledgement, hiding her face so that no one would see her disappointment or her heartbreak. She looks up at him fearlessly with swollen eyes and a congested nose and William cannot be thankful enough.

“We need prayer too,” Ginnie says quietly.

The unexpected words knock him breathless. He sags against the counter with the weight of that truth. He ought to be ashamed to ask his burdened children for prayers, but here he is, crawling on his hands and feet and barely making it ahead, and he does not know how much longer he can go. 

“We do,” William says. “Tommy wouldn’t be able to pray for us if he did not know what to pray for, would he?” 

Ginnie nods mutely. William draws in a breath, which nearly dislodges the lump that is caught in his throat. 

“I’m going to write to him, then,” she says. She puts a protective hand on her pocket, where Tommy’s letter crinkles under her touch. She hesitates. “Thank you, Papa.” 

“What are you thanking me for?” William says. “What could I have done right?” 

“Telling me the truth,” she says. “Telling me--that you can’t do this either. You can’t protect anyone by pretending to be invincible. It only makes the rest of us feel alone.” She wipes her eyes again with the back of her hand before wrapping a scarf around her neck. “I’ll be back to open for lunch, Dad.” 

And with that, she leaves the flat, and leaves William in the unexpected weight of her words. He lingers on it like it is a stiff drink. 

-

William wakes up to a cry. 

He jumps out of bed immediately, reaching for the knife under his pillow that he had long stopped carrying. He searches the dark room for the outline of a robber, a broken window, a door thrown off its hinges. The stark light of an enemy flare, and the haunted, terrified eyes of a young soldier who shouts,  _ Eng _ _ lä _ _ nder! _

Instead, he sees the skimmed light of the crescent moon shying through the windowpanes that are glossed over with rainfall, and Eloise huddled on her side of the bed, trembling uncontrollably. 

William immediately goes to her side of the bed, crouching by her side. Her face emerges halfway from underneath the blankets, eyes bright and wide in the dark. When she sees William, she buries her face into the pillow. Her fingers dig into the fabric, until she nearly punctures through them. 

He gently strokes her hair. Her shoulders hunch, and her back arches like she is a feral, wounded animal that cannot differentiate the hand that feeds and the hand that beats. 

“Eloise?” William whispers. 

Eloise shakes her head. William cannot tell if she is crying, but there is no jagged, shaking breaths that wrack her back. She curls inward as if she can disappear, or as much as she can manage when she has to keep one leg still and straight. Neither of them say anything, letting the steady drumming of rain speak for them. 

“Does your leg hurt?” William says. “If I accidentally kicked it, I can sleep in Tommy’s room until--”

“Don’t go,” Eloise says. “Please don’t go.” 

William stops. Eloise reaches blindly for him and grips his stump. Her hand is hot and nervous. He sits cross-legged on the rug, so that his face is level with hers. 

“I’m sorry,” Eloise says. “I woke you, didn’t I?” 

“Nothing to be sorry for,” says William. “It was getting a bit boring, anyway.” 

Eloise doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t blame her. 

“Just go back to bed,” she whispers. “You’ve had a long night.” 

“Not so long,” William says. “Having Nicky help out takes a load off of me.” 

Eloise presses her lips together. She tries to turn to face him fully, but she winces when her leg protests. 

“Careful, love,” William says. 

“Don’t sit on the ground like that,” she says. “You’ll get a chill.” 

“This is nothing.”

Eloise gives William a long, indecipherable look, so he acquiesces. He gets off the ground and sits back on his side of the bed. Eloise pushes herself into a sitting position--by the time she manages, she pants from the effort, and she leans her head against William’s shoulder. Her heavily cast leg bulges underneath the bedsheets. William wraps his arm around her shoulders, holding her tight against his side.

“Was it a nightmare?” he asks. 

Eloise hesitates. He feels her shivering against his ribs. 

“No,” she says. “I’ve been awake this whole time.” 

William raises his wrist to check the time, then remembers. He doubts it is any earlier than four in the morning. 

“You should go back to sleep,” she says. “I know how hard it is for you to sleep.” 

“Tell me what is the matter, Eloise,” says William. 

“I just can’t sleep,” she says. “That’s all.” 

“I feel you sweating through your hair,” he says. “Eloise, I feel your heart racing.” 

Eloise draws in a deep, shaking breath, as if her lungs can never have enough. 

“If another bomb falls on us, I wouldn’t even be able to run away,” she says. 

Her whisper is taut with shameful terror, a strung bowstring that shoots an arrow straight through William’s chest. Eloise buries her face in her hands, as the fear that she has bound tightly and buried deep in her being has been set loose, infecting every part of her being. 

“I keep trying to think of how I could get away if a bomb fell over our house, and I can’t think of any way I could,” she says. “Jumping out the window, throwing myself down the stairs and crawling--I never get away in time. I never--” 

She hiccups. William feels a lump form in his throat. He has been married to Eloise for nearly thirty years. They have shared life for so long, its victories and its brokenness, shared their flesh to create their impossible children, and it is this moment when he feels absolutely, irrevocably known by her. 

“I’m weak, aren’t I?” she says. “I’m so bloody weak.” 

“What are you talking about?” William says. 

“All it took was one bomb,” says Eloise. “And now I can’t stop thinking that I hear a plane fly overhead. I can’t stop my hands from shaking.”

She looks down at said hands--she fumbles with her fingers, trying to keep them still, but the anxiety mounts in her chest until she moans from the pain of it. 

“You had gone through an entire war,” Eloise says. “Hell, Edith had gone through this every night for months. And Tommy--Tommy--” 

She chokes on the name of their son. 

“How, Will?” she says. “I’ve only gone through this once and I’m falling apart. How had you gone through this for years?”

William does not know what to say, because he does not know the answer. It had nothing to do with his strength or willpower, because all he did was cover his head. The rain falls sharply on the rooftop, and even today his stomach clenches at the thought of thunder, because his blood and bones have not fully differentiated storms from bombs. 

“I had you,” William says.

Eloise goes still on his shoulder. William thinks about the times he has dived under the kitchen table and choked for air when he heard thunder, or the times he disappointed his daughters when he refused to go see the firecrackers with them during the festivals. When the word ‘bomb’ was enough to send him throwing himself to the ground, screaming. He thinks of all the times he had become a ball and chain to their family, dragging them into the hell he had created. They wanted to move on from the war, carry on with a father who miraculously made it home, and he wouldn’t let them for years. 

“I don’t know how I would have done it without you,” he says. “The days I thought it was impossible, and that if it was going to be like this for the rest of my life--”

He stops himself. He fixes his gaze on the doorknob across from him. A wounded, fragile animal stirs in his chest, starved to the bone and pathetic. It groans for the sunlight, for the free air after being trapped in his ribcage for twenty-five years. 

“Then what?” Eloise says. 

William rests his head against hers. It is too much for her, he thinks. It would break her heart. 

But he is here. He is still here. And she leans against his side, her breath shaky and her fear turning her face away from his. He wants her to look him in the eyes without shame. 

“If it was going to be like this for the rest of my life, it would have been better if the bombs killed me at the start,” he says quietly. 

He remorsefully tightens his grip on Eloise’s shoulders. She does not protest. 

“But you were there,” says William. “Each step of it. On those impossible days, you were by my side.” 

He closes his eyes and breathes in her scent, her warmth. She smells of nervous sweat, and she is clammy as if she has a fever. He wants to hold her so close that he will not know where his skin ends and hers begins. 

“I didn’t do anything,” Eloise whispers. “I could have done more. If this is just a taste of how you felt, I should have done more.” 

“Like what?” William says. “Do you think you could have saved me, Eloise?” 

Eloise swallows audibly, but she can say nothing. 

“You stayed with me. At my worst, you were there.” His throat catches. “Even if there were days when you didn’t want to, you stayed. That must have been so hard for you. And there isn’t a second that goes by where I don’t thank God for you. So let me be here, Eloise, right here with you. Don’t hide your face from me.”

Eloise tries to speak, but she can’t make out the words. William understands; with his stump he gently wipes her face dry. When Eloise can breathe freely again, he lays her down onto the pillow and looks down at his wife. There are more lines on her forehead, from her nose to the corner of her lips, a new age spot on her cheek, and her dark hair looks as if it is moon-kissed. He remembers how deeply in love with her he was when he first lay her down, and would have never imagined that he could come to love her ten, twenty, thirty times more in due time. 

“It’s been a hard day,” he says.

“It’s been a hard four years,” she says.

He smiles wryly, and tells her to wait for him. He creeps out of the bedroom, careful not to hit the creaking floorboard between Ginnie and his room. He opens the door to Tommy’s bedroom. 

The drapes are thrown open, so that the orange nubs of distant streetlights freckle the glass. The room is clean, because Eloise dusts it often, and because every now and then when they open the window the stray cat likes to sneak inside and rearrange the contents of Tommy’s desk. But it is still wintertime, and the cat prefers the bakery down on Chatham Street during the cold months, so the room is empty. 

He carefully lowers himself to the little bookshelf, whose edges are splintering with age. He pries out a poetry book wedged in the bottom shelf, one that the children have not touched in a while but nevertheless fondly hoard. Despite Tommy’s insistence, the Schofields do not give away a single page of his books. Save for the King Arthur book--Adam Samuels’ mother had promised that she would not keep Tommy’s beloved book, but when she kissed goodbye each of her son’s old notes and doodles along the margins of Merlyn and Wart’s adventures, William thanked her for the tea and left her home without it. 

He returns to their bedroom and turns on a bedside lamp. Eloise takes one look at the cover of the book and cracks a smile. 

“I suppose it has been that sort of day, hasn’t it?” she says. 

“I thought we might indulge ourselves in some fancy,” he says. 

Eloise looks up at him. Her eyes are still teary, but they crinkle in her smile.

“Never change, William Schofield,” she says. 

He crawls into bed beside her. She closes her eyes, releasing the burdens of this day so that her chest can rise and fall freely. William opens the book in the middle, to the first poem he finds. He reads out loud, to the beat of Eloise's breaths.

“ _ Wherever I am, there's always Pooh, _

_ There's always Pooh and Me. _

_ Whatever I do, he wants to do, _

_ "Where are you going today?" says Pooh: _

_ "Well, that's very odd 'cos I was too. _

_ Let's go together," says Pooh, says he. _

_ "Let's go together," says Pooh…” _

Before he reaches the last word of the poem, Eloise has already fallen asleep. 

-

This does not end either. 


	6. his own vine and fig tree

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We made it, everyone. The last chapter of this story. We didn't think we would make it this far.....but we did. 
> 
> Happy VE Day :).
> 
> Thank you so much to all those who have been consistently reading this story and this series. A heartfelt and grateful thanks to Ealasaid, Pavuvu, scientistsinistral, and WafflesRisa for cheering me on as I wrote and sweated and bemoaned writing, and a special warm thanks to Yes and InconsistentlyPassionate for consistently reading and sharing with me your thoughts on the chapters. It really means so much to me. 
> 
> As always, please check out the fics from co-creator scientistsinistral in this series--'true lovers' knot,' 'our dying soldier lives,' and 'take my whole life too' for a closer look into Will and Eloise's relationship and marriage. You don't need me to tell you twice to read 'Pick a Man. Bring your Kit.' by WafflesRisa and yet here I am, bc it's worth it. And read read read the 'between the crosses' series by Ealasaid and Pavuvu for an intricate and immersive universe and tender love. 
> 
> Poem referenced in this story is 'Marina' by T.S. Eliot (sorry vuvu). Epitaph and chapter title is from the Book of Micah. 
> 
> Thank you <3

> Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid, for the Lord Almighty has spoken.  
> 

When the weekend that Edith will visit approaches, Ginnie suddenly develops the inability to keep a straight face. Over the breakfast table, as she mops up the remnants of the beans with her toast, she will casually remind them that Edith is coming to visit, as if Eloise hasn’t already been counting down the days with panic about how to feed the whole family properly. When William responds agreeably, Ginnie casts her gaze sideways and says, “And not for Christmas either, who would think!”--to which Eloise will eye her suspiciously as Ginnie then declares loudly she ought to get things ready for the day. 

William cannot expect anything less from his daughter who has a flair for dramatics.

The morning that Edith’s train arrives, Ginnie volunteers to pick them up from the station. In the meantime, William lays out the clean sheets on the beds according to Eloise’s direction and prepares breakfast tea.

“Do you think that this is enough?” Eloise says, fretting over the refrigerator’s contents. “Some host we would be if we can’t even feed our own daughter when she visits.” 

“She’s bringing her own ration book to help,” William says. “We have it all taken care of, Eloise.” 

Eloise purses her lips before muttering something to herself about making an extra batch of biscuits. William opens the window for some fresh air before the summer afternoon can bake them without the help of an oven. On the kitchen windowsill, a cat with grey paws and grey ears yawns irritatedly and leaps down onto the awning underneath to get out of the way. 

The girls make it to the flat slower than William expects, and he had been generous with his estimation because he knows how little his daughters multitask when they gossip. When he hears Edith call out _Hullo, I’m here!_ from the door, he resists the urge to fly to greet her. He offers Eloise his arm, who takes it, and they reach their daughters together. 

“Oh, it’s so good to see you,” Edith says, kissing her parents on the cheek. Somehow their daughter grows more beautiful each day; the summer dew makes her face full and glowing. “How have you been keeping, Mum?” 

“I’m doing better, love,” Eloise says. She smooths Edith’s shoulder, the flowing summer dress in a pastel green. “Isn’t this another one of your cousin’s dresses?” 

Edith casts a sidelong glance at Ginnie, who is carrying her carpetbag for her. 

“Yes,” she says. “Aunt Millie gave it to me to use.”

“Do you not have enough clothes, Edith?” says William. “Do you not have a clothing book?” 

“These are very comfortable,” Edith says. “And don’t worry, Papa. I’ve got a new ration book and everything.” 

The corner of her lips twitch upward, which William almost misses. Eloise furrows her brow, but doesn’t say anything. 

“Going to set this down in the room,” Ginnie says. “Come on, Edith.”

The two young women hurry down the hallway, and the bedroom door barely stifles their giggles. 

“Well, all right,” says William. “They’re definitely up to something.”

Edith catches them up with life in London over breakfast tea. She talks how Arthur’s bakery has been doubling their work to provide for the country, how Claire has been called up to become a fire engine driver and makes record time, about their neighbours from Poland whom they invite over for dinner. 

“And I’ve finally-- _finally_ \--got a handle of your recipe for those biscuits, Mum,” Edith says. “Even without the sugar, and Arthur has finally said that they’re palatable.” 

“I wouldn’t call it a handle so much as barely holding on for dear life,” Ginnie says. 

“What do you expect of me?” Edith says. “I hadn’t been able to properly cook for myself for three years since I had started work.”

“A shame you got married. Now all of your wooers can’t keep buying you free meals,” says Ginnie. Edith growls in the background. “Arthur is a wonderful chap and all, but free meals, Edith? How was there competition?”

“You just wait until _you_ have eyes for someone other than Frank Sinatra, or should I say ears?” says Edith. 

“Guess that will never happen,” says Ginnie. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Edith says coyly. “You know who has a rather strong singing voice?” 

“He sounds like a foghorn and you know it,” Ginnie says.

“Who, Virginia?” Edith says, batting her eyelashes. “Who on earth did you so quickly assume I meant?” 

“Sod off,” Ginnie says, reddening swiftly. 

Edith wiggles her eyebrows as she twists apart a scone. William also wants to know who Ginnie assumed, but also reckons that he would be the last to find out. 

“How do you and Arthur take care of the home anyway?” says Eloise. “With him working before sunrise at the bakery and you working well into the night.”

“Well,” Edith says with deliberation as she sets down her teacup on the saucer--her barely drunk tea, William notices. “I’ve actually been working only part time, at the moment.” 

“Are you?” William says. “Why is that?” 

Ginnie buries her face in her hands. Edith elbows her sharply. William looks about his daughters bemusedly.

“What is it?” he says. 

“Nothing!” Edith says when Ginnie bites a scream down in her palm. “Nothing, she’s just being ridiculous.” 

Eloise taps her fingers on the table, narrowing her eyes at the two women. Ginnie grunts, presumably because Edith has kicked her in the shin. 

“But yes,” Edith says as-a-matter-of-factly while Ginnie downs her piping hot cup of tea. “I’m only working part-time, at the moment. I need to train my replacement...teach her the ropes.”

“You’re getting replaced?” William says. “But you’re the best at your work! After everything you’ve given them and now they’re going to replace you?” 

Edith smirks furtively at Ginnie, who loudly proclaims, “You’re _joking!”_

“All right, what are you doing?” he says.

“No!” When Edith rubs her hand together excitedly, Ginnie spins towards her. “Last chance! Last chance!” 

“This is like watching a slow death,” Eloise says.

“Sorry, what is going on?” William says. “What do _you_ know?” 

Eloise opens her mouth, a twinkle in her eye, but Edith waves her hand quickly.

“Papa,” she says, as if she is a headmistress of a school and sitting him down for a scolding. “How many cups of tea have you drunk since we sat down?” 

“I haven’t been counting,” William says. 

“Please,” Ginnie says miserably. “Please, just put me out of my misery.” 

“But more than one, right?” says Edith, quite loudly.

“Of course,” William says.

“And how many cups have _I_ had?” Edith says. 

“You--well, you have barely started yours, haven’t you?” 

Edith nods slowly, while nibbling on a scone smeared with marmite. William looks from Edith to the monstrosity of a scone, before his jaw drops. 

“ _Edith?_ ” he says, aghast. “Are you pregnant?” 

“Bloody _hell_ , Dad!” Ginnie screams. 

Edith whoops in victory, knocking the chair down as she jumps to her feet with her hands held high in victory. Ginnie runs into the living room to scream into a sofa pillow as Eloise doubles over, laughing. William can only sit there, utterly gobsmacked as the women display such opposite range of emotions right before him. 

“Two shillings for me-e-e-e!” Edith sings. 

“Not fair!” Ginnie says, running back to the table. “Not fair--you made the clues _very_ obvious by the end!” 

“Doesn’t matter!” Edith says. “You wagered that Dad would figure it out after I mention I worked less. I said he wouldn’t figure it out until I ate a terribly salty scone. Now pay up your shillings, this mother has to start saving for a crib.” 

Ginnie screeches again. Eloise, after the cackling subsides, now sings with delight as she crosses over and cups Edith’s face. 

“My baby girl is going to be a mother!” she says. There are tears in her eyes. “Oh my goodness, Edith--you’re going to have a baby!” 

“How long did _you_ know?” William says to Eloise. 

“Oh, Will, the moment Edith walked into the room, I saw there was something different about her,” says Eloise. “Don’t be self-conscious, love. You don’t realise, but it’s true--a woman never forgets what it’s like to have a baby.” 

“I had too much faith in you,” Ginnie says gravely, shaking her head. 

“You were more realistic than Tommy,” Edith says. “That little prat owes me _four_ shillings. He was so positive that you would have figured it out the same time as Mum, Papa.” 

“Men,” Eloise says with a grin. “They are rather optimistic, aren’t they?” 

William shakes his head, the shock (and sheepishness) now wearing off. The impact of the news belatedly hits him--he is going to be a grandfather. The daughter whom he remembers welcoming into the world is now going to welcome her own little one. So much emotion wells up inside of him that he wants to cry out, because ecstasy shares the same coin as terror in the way that it makes his heart pound, his blood race, his life flash before his eyes. In the midst of war and darkness, he is going to be a grandfather. The things that he has never deserved keep coming true, and he can only stand in silent awe and learn to reconcile them. 

“How long, Edith?” he says. “When are you due?” 

“December,” says Edith. She puts her hand on her belly, which is still small and unnoticeable, especially under her cousin’s looser maternity dress. Looking at her now, William should have realised ages ago that she is pregnant. She glows like the summer sun. “I’ll start 1944 with new life, Papa!” 

Anything can happen in the next several months--their family is more than aware of that. Hope is a dangerous, excruciatingly foolish thing, and it looks beautiful on his daughter. William swallows hard, and the lump in his throat does not choke him--rather, the pain of it makes breathing a spine-tingling blessing. 

“You’re the foolish one,” he says. “You think that I will let my daughter go and _buy_ a crib of her own? Like some sort of peasant?”

“Peasants don’t buy things, you fool,” says Eloise.

“We still have your crib, Edith,” says William. “The one that you first slept in--that you all slept in. I built that for you, did you know?” 

After Tommy had outgrown it, William had carefully taken the crib apart and stored it underneath Tommy’s bed. There had been plenty of times where they could have given it away, when his sister had her first grandchild, or when Nicholas Wheeler came as a surprise to his parents, but William did not want to part with it. Not only had there been that slim possibility that he and Eloise might gain a fourth child for all they knew, but the crib was William’s first gift to his children, the home that he built for them, and he always hoped that they would use it for their own babies. 

He takes the women to Tommy’s room, where he pulls out the panels of the crib that are stacked underneath the bed. Edith and Ginnie gasp in hushed awe as they run their hands over the sturdy wood, their hands wiping the peach fuzz dust from the nooks that as toddlers they used to clutch with hands no bigger than primroses. 

“I remember when Tommy was sleeping in this old thing,” Ginnie says, propping up the panels. All it needs are a couple screws to return to place and it will withstand new lifetimes. 

“Try remembering when all three of you were sleeping in this old thing!” Eloise says. 

She rests her leg on Tommy’s desk chair, but she too holds up one of the panels. She looks down at the deconstructed crib, her eyes shining. 

“You all used to fit in this little space,” William says, looking down at the space where the mattress ought to be. “Now look, you would barely be able to crouch inside to fit.” 

“You all used to fit in here!” Eloise says, putting a hand to her own belly. 

She then becomes speechless, and she clutches Edith’s hand tightly. Edith gives her mother a wide, knowing smile. 

“I can really use this, Papa?” she says. 

“You may need to wait until Arthur can come to Reading with you,” William says. “So you don’t have to carry everything on your own. But it’s yours, Edith. As it first was.” 

Edith crouches, holding one of the panels by the bars. She peers into the empty space, where she used to look out from as a small baby, and eventually when she used to stand on her tiptoes to stare down at her younger siblings with awe. Now she is twenty-nine, and she imagines her own little miracle sleeping on the other side of the wooden bars. 

“Oh, Edith,” Eloise says. Her voice wobbles, and in this moment she looks ageless. “Get ready. Get ready for the most wonderful joy.” 

Edith bites her lip in a coy smile while Ginnie grins broadly. William looks at them both, and although he will still notice the gaping hole in the middle of his two daughters, he marvels at his children, who have not once ceased to become a miracle since the moment they were made. 

-

Nicholas gives Ginnie’s mouth a run for her money. He does not work the entire shift at the pub, as the Lady of the Lake closes late into the night, but he certainly talks all seven hours’ worth of words in half the time. Even though William will not let him serve the drinks, Nicholas will incessantly ask William about alcohol proofs, drink combinations, and what sort of drunks are each familiar face in Reading. Whenever he is _not_ asking William for the answers to the universe and _ought_ to be cleaning the glasses or restocking the shelves, he can be found adding more coins to the jukebox. For morale, Mr Schofield, he insists. 

It is not that he isn’t helpful--Nicholas continues to help at the Lady of the Lake after Eloise can walk on her own, albeit with a limp as the surgeon had suspected. But he is certainly nothing like the teenage boy that William had personal experience raising. And at this age, he has the utmost respect for Jacob Wheeler for it. Nicholas’ overeager extroversion helps warm the pub. 

It is immediately chilling, then, when Nicholas enters the pub for a day of work at five in the afternoon, and William at first had not even heard him walk in. 

William is in the back room keeping track of their inventory when he looks up and realises that Nicholas is putting the stools back into place. William waves through the glass when Nicholas looks up, but Nicholas does not see him. 

“Good afternoon, Nicholas,” William says when he finishes the inventory. “All right?” 

Nicholas hums as an answer. He takes the rubbish out from behind the bar. William furrows his brow. He puts a hand on Nicholas’ shoulder; he feels the boy stiffen immediately. 

“Has something happened?” he says. 

Nicholas’ hands tighten around the rubbish bin. He takes in a deep breath and lifts his face, but his hazel eyes do not meet William’s.

“Everything’s fine, sir,” he says. 

He turns to take out the rubbish without another word. William remains standing at the bar, a little lost, but even more at a loss of what to do. 

That evening, Wheeler does not come for a pint. At around eight thirty in the evening, William notices Nicholas listlessly wiping glasses that are already dry by the tap. It is not a slow night, and Eloise is staying seated because the weather is making her ankle hurt, but William goes up to Nicholas. 

“Why don’t you call it a night early, Nicholas?” he says. “It’s not too busy.”

Nicholas lowers his head.

“I’m all right,” he says. “I can finish at the hour.” 

“I know you can,” William says. “But Ginnie will be in earlier tonight. We’ll be fine here.” 

“Are you sure, Mr Schofield?” he says. 

“Yes,” says William. “You’ve done good work today, Nicky. Go rest now.” 

Nicholas sets down the rag. 

“Thank you, sir,” he says. 

He leaves not long after that. Eloise shoots William a worrying glance when Nicholas barely utters a goodbye. William purses his lips. It is not difficult to imagine what could be hanging over the sixteen-year-old’s head. It leaves a heavy stone in his stomach. 

Luckily, Ginnie gets off from Battle Hospital early. She is still sweaty from the work, but she kisses her parents on the cheek and helps pour a lager for Duncombe. She looks around the pub--seeing that it is adequately busy enough for private conversation, she turns to her parents.

“Where’d Nicky go?” she says.

“I let him go home early,” says William. “He didn’t seem to be doing well.”

Ginnie’s dark brows furrow.

“Is he ill?” he says.

“I don’t know,” William says. 

The hardness in his stomach grows. But he does not want to speculate. There must also be reason that Wheeler has not come for his usual pint on a Wednesday night. He unconsciously reaches for his daughter. She does not shake off his hand on her elbow.

“How was the hospital?” he says. 

Ginnie looks up to William. She smiles tiredly.

“Good,” she says. “But hard.” 

“Tell me,” he says. 

Ginnie hums. She looks down at the whiskey that she is pouring into a glass for Mr Garrison. 

“Some of the boys who got injured in Italy have been brought to Battle Hospital to recover,” she says. “Including Alfred Chapman.” 

“Sarah’s boy?” Eloise says. “He’s been brought to Reading?”

“Just today,” says Ginnie. “So--that was nice.”

William knows that there are other words that Ginnie wants to use. She feels him watching her, and she heaves a sigh.

“It’s been like that since I’ve started working at Battle Hospital,” she says. “I keep thinking, maybe I’ll see someone I know. If Tommy gets hurt--God forbid--or Ben, or Edmund and Philip Peterson, and they’re brought to Battle Hospital, I could help them change their dressings. I can hold their hands until they get better. I could get them a glass of water.” 

She smiles wryly before shaking her head, as if self-conscious of her own sentiment. It makes William feel a rush of softness in the midst of such a painful scenario. If their Tommy would get hurt--

But Tommy is still in the British Isles; although judging by the coming turning of the tide, it is only a matter of time. The British Army has moved from Egypt into Italy, and France waits with bated breath. The war, for all they know, has only just begun. 

The next morning, before opening for lunch, William goes down to Wheeler’s shop. He breathes a sigh of relief when he sees that the shop is open, but when he knocks on the door for Wheeler’s attention, his heart pauses with dread. He sees that Wheeler isn’t in. It is only Nicholas, working underneath an automobile, black grease smudged on his nose. He bumps his head when he hears William knock, and crawls out from underneath.

“Is your father in?” says William.

“He’ll be in later in the morning,” says Nicholas. “He had a long night.”

It looks like Nicholas had a long night as well. The grease is not the only culprit for dark shadows on his face. 

“Has something happened?” William asks.

Nicholas hesitates. He wipes his hands on a grubby rag. 

“No,” he says. “That is--I don’t know. Shall I tell Dad that you came by?” 

“I can drop by later,” William says. Nicholas nods wordlessly. “If there’s anything your family needs, Nicky, you know you can ask me.” 

“We would, Mr Schofield,” Nicholas says faintly, and the unsaid _but_ hangs heavy at the end of the sentence. “Thank you.” 

He crawls back underneath the car and continues his work. William returns to the pub, and stops by another hour later when Wheeler has made it to the shop. 

Wheeler has a nervous cut on his face from a clumsy close shave, and judging by the shadows under his eyes he’d be lucky if he had gotten two hours of sleep last night. The automobile that Nicholas was working on earlier is gone--he must have finished the work by now--and Nicholas is in the corner, silently cleaning the wrenches over and over again. 

“Good morning, Jacob,” William says. 

Jacob Wheeler does not smile at William, although he certainly tries. His hand shakes as it holds on a wrench, and he paces shakily as if his ankles are made of matchsticks. He keeps looking out the door, as if he is waiting for someone to walk through that isn’t William. 

“Will,” Jacob says. He sets down the wrench. “Could I get you tea?”

“No,” William says. “Thank you. I’m all right. I was just dropping by to--to see if anything is the matter.”

Jacob presses his lips together, but they barely hide the faintest of tremors. In the corner, Nicholas winces, but says nothing. 

“It’s Ben,” Wheeler says. “We got a telegram about him yesterday.”

William’s stomach drops to his feet. He doesn’t know what to say. Jacob presses his hand against his forehead, trying to breathe.

“Missing,” he chokes out. “He’s gone missing.”

“Oh, Jacob,” William whispers. 

Jacob shakes his head. He tries to take a calming breath.

“But we don’t know,” he says. “We don’t know if that’s--maybe he is alive, still, but they’ve lost touch with him. Maybe there’s still--” 

He dares not say it. William guides Jacob to a stool to sit on. Nicholas wordlessly leaves for the back room. Jacob clutches his knees as he takes in deep breaths, every now and then mopping his brow with a dirty rag. William can do nothing but hold tightly on Jacob’s shoulder, stumbling over the wrong things to say. 

“Oh, hell,” Jacob moans, and he buries his face in his hands. “Oh God, oh God, he’s dead, isn’t he? My Ben, he’s dead, isn’t he?” 

“Jacob,” William says. 

“What am I supposed to think, Will?” says Jacob. “What am I supposed to do now? If I assume that he’s dead, even if he’s alive, will that just curse him and he will die? If I think he’s alive when he’s dead, am I just hurting myself more?” 

“You need to breathe, Jacob,” William says. He puts his hand on Wheeler’s shoulders to steady him as Wheeler chokes for air. “Come on. Start with this. And then--well, we’ll figure it out, then.” 

They sound rubbish, the words coming from his mouth. All words that come in the aftermath of a child’s demise will most likely be rubbish. Even after Lee Moore’s death, Ollie Peterson’s death, and countless other deaths of Reading’s children, William constantly finds himself saying clumsy things, because he does not dare to empathise. 

Jacob breathes in deeply, gradually, and he holds tightly on William’s forearms when he does. William cannot help but be selfish--as Jacob drowns in anxiety for his doomed son, William thinks of Tommy. He thinks back to his son’s last letter, carefully folded on the nightstand in their bedroom, and wonders how much could change within three days. 

“What can I do for you, Jacob? William says. “Tell me, and I will.” 

“I just want an answer, Schofield,” Jacob says. His voice trembles. “I just want my son.” 

Jacob had served in the Great War, albeit as a mechanic. They had not become friends until they returned to England, silently acknowledging that the person that they meet now is not the person that was here before. William has never seen Jacob so broken, even though he knows it cannot be the first. 

William promises him that he will check in on Jacob often, and that he will pray for a miracle. Both their boys have survived against the odds in Dunkirk already--William hopes that they have not run over their quota of mercy. 

So he does just that--stops by Jacob’s shop every day before opening or between lunch and dinner shifts. They do not talk about Ben after that--William does not know if he ought to try. Sometimes Delia will be there--he has never seen her so unsure, never heard her stutter until now. Nicholas, often, is silent, continuing to work on anything he can get his hands on. 

Until one Monday, after a weekend of mundaneness, when William heads to the shop, he sees that the door is still locked, and it is empty inside. Something tears in his chest, and he does not know what to pray. 

He goes back to the Lady of the Lake to tell Eloise. But when he walks through the door, he runs right into Ginnie, and his breath stops short of a gasp. 

“All right, Dad?” says Ginnie. 

Her hair is tied up with a rag, and the morning is still fresh in her eyes. William takes too long to answer for him to say, yes, everything is all right, and it shows on her face. 

“The Wheelers,” William finally says. “Their shop is closed today.” 

Ginnie’s face does not change, and that is what is hardest to see. She does not stiffen, her teeth do not bare, eyes do not widen. She stays still as if she is unsurprised--she stays still as if she does not believe what he does not say. 

“Do you think--?” she starts, and then stops herself. “Is Ben dead?” 

William takes in a deep breath, trying to figure out what to tell his daughter. This is not the first time that someone knocked on her door to let her know that her friend is dead. He doubts that it will be her last. He understands, and his soul aches. 

“Yes,” he says softly. “Yes, I think he is.” 

Once, when they were eight years old, Benjamin Wheeler got in a row with Ginnie in the schoolyard because she told on him for putting a toad in the teacher’s coat pocket. After he called her a very rude word, she tackled him and they fought in the mud until a third classmate tattled on them to the headmistress and got the both of them caned; since then they formed a pact of watching the other’s back, and fighting each other’s battles. 

William and Eloise had a long running bet of whether or not Ginnie and Benjamin would end up marrying. Now it looks like Eloise owes William five shillings. But when William sees the look on Ginnie’s face, he wonders if in another universe it would be Eloise who wins the wager. 

Ginnie steps to the side to let him through the door. She does not say anything. William puts a hand on her shoulder and squeezes it tight. He leans forward and rests his forehead against hers. She lets him. He holds her like this for a while, remembering the sandy-haired young man who used to goad Ginnie into dance-offs at the Rock-Ola jukebox. It is not enough, but she takes it. 

William climbs up the stairs to the flat, and tells Eloise. She pales, because all of Reading’s sons are everyone’s in a time like this. They do not have many rations to spare, but they have time. They gather the rags, their broom and soaps, their feather dusters, to lend a hand. Eloise scribbles a few recipes of her own onto notebook paper. They go back down the stairs to the pub, and Ginnie is nowhere to be found. So they walk together to the Wheelers’ home. 

The whole way there, William feels a mounting heaviness that he does not know the name for. It is far different from the thunderous heartbeat that dreads death and man-made thunder, or the twisting in his stomach as he waited by the phone at six in the morning for Edith to call. It is not dissimilar to grief, but it puts William off his guard because when he tries to justify it, it slips from his hands misshapen and unidentifiable. It is not until he stands before the Wheelers’ door that he understands. His friend has gone through William’s greatest fear. For all that he has feared and imagined it, William has no idea what this pain is like. He does not know what will be on the other side of the door. 

But it does not stop him from knocking. 

There is the sound of shuffling feet behind the front door. William takes in a deep breath when it swings open. Isabel Tatlock is standing at the entrance, oven mitts on her hand and her yellow hair bundled up at the back of her head. There is a scar over her temple, from when the People’s Pantry was bombed, but she had otherwise narrowly escaped much damage. As the Wheelers’ neighbour, she would be the first to know of any news on Benjamin, if any broken cry from an open window does not give it away. 

“Hello, Will, Eloise,” Isabel says. She smiles sadly. “You’ve figured it out, then?” 

“Jacob hasn’t opened shop,” William says. “Are they--?” 

Isabel gestures with her head to the back of the home. 

“I’m getting some lunch for them ready,” she says. “Just put it in the oven--what’s that you brought with you, Eloise?” 

“Cleaning rags,” Eloise says. She lifts a pail full of rags, almost apologetically. It is all they can offer. “We thought--if there is anything we could do--” 

Isabel clasps Eloise’s hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. 

“I’ll let them know you’re here,” she says. 

She turns away to find the Wheelers. After a moment, she returns and welcomes them inside the Wheelers’ home.

Their footsteps on the foyer floor rug somehow echo through the house. Isabel leads them to the living room, and when he finally hears a sign of life William’s heart skips a beat. Someone is hastily trying to blow their nose on a handkerchief, and another person is whispering, _not yet, not yet,_ or at least that is what William thinks he hears. They round the corner and William utters a soft sigh.

“Jacob,” he says. 

He nearly doesn’t recognise his old friend. Jacob is huddled on the sofa, holding Delia’s hand tightly but unable to mask the tremble in both of their fingers. His eyes are red and swollen, the skin around it freshly scratched when he had hastily tried to mop his face before the Schofields step inside. There are still tears glinting on the surface of his stubble. Delia has a framed photo of Benjamin on her lap--taken in 1939, grinning in the garden with his kid brother on his shoulders and the terrier at his feet. Her grief seems to be beyond tears. 

“Hello, Will,” Jacob says. 

His voice is calmer than William had expected, and he thinks all of a sudden--I can handle it if you can. Like when Eloise leaned against his shoulder and hid her face from him, he thinks--if you can handle it, I will. You don’t have to hide. 

“Ben is dead,” says Jacob. 

The finality of the confirmation falls so easily. He opens his palm. There is Benjamin’s identity tag in his hand, the remnant of him sent home, a small metallic disc like a rusting communion wafer. He looks William in the eye, and William does not look away. 

“I’m so sorry,” he says softly. 

Isabel comes from the kitchen with a freshly brewed pot of tea and pours each of them a steaming cup. Eloise tries to refuse--they are not here to be guests--but Isabel will not hear a word of it. There is something frightfully admirable about her to William--a woman who is by no means unacquainted with grief, who rolls up her sleeve and serves her neighbour in the face of the bitterest news. She had known what it was that she needed when she lost her family twelve years ago. Grief has prepared her to love. 

“There’s more than enough tea to go around,” Isabel says. 

She offers the rocking chair to William, who adamantly refuses and kneels on the rug instead. 

“I’ve brought our rags,” Eloise says. She sounds nervous, unsure if any of this will be helpful, or if she will only be bothersome for trying. “If there is any cleaning that you need done, or--”

“That’s too kind of you,” Delia says. Her voice is husky with underuse. “I can’t ask you to do that.” 

“You don’t need to ask, Delia,” Eloise says. “Is Nicky here?”

“He’s in the garden. He won’t come inside,” Delia says. She rubs her weary brow. “He had just sent the mouth organ to Ben as a present, you know--before we got the first telegram. He had saved up for one this whole time.” 

She traces Benjamin’s face with her finger, committing to memory the lines of his strong chin. 

“He hasn’t said a word since then,” Jacob says painfully. “Hardly anything. The boy’s only sixteen. Benny was his hero.” 

The past tense feels strange in William’s ear, as it must have felt strange on Jacob’s tongue. Tomorrow, Benjamin Wheeler should stop by the pub after working at the shop, to get a drink of scotch the same way that his father likes it, to banter with Ginnie until she threatens to ban him for life. But Benjamin will never come by again, and the truth is he hasn’t been for four years. The loss is jagged, deep, and yet the war has taken him away from them already, and nothing changes. There is no casket, no grave to dig to put in stone the fact that Benjamin is gone--he will always be across the street, just ten minutes away from the end of his shift, his hand on the pub door handle but never coming in. 

“I think I knew,” Delia says, her voice faraway. “Even before the first telegram came. I could not sleep, and my stomach hurt all day and night. I felt it--all of a sudden, like my bones were suddenly not my own. I felt my son die and I couldn’t do anything to help him.” 

Eloise sits at Delia’s side and cradles her head, stroking her brown hair. Delia’s lips twist. She presses her fingers against them, her eyes wide and looking at none of them. 

“I don’t know what to do,” she says. “I ought to pray, but I cannot even find the words.” 

She loses her voice, and only now does she let the tears fall. William’s heart shatters, and the broken pieces threaten to rip him apart. No parent should have to bury their child, and yet this upset of the natural order, this cruel injustice happens day by day, not just for Reading but for England, for Europe, for the entire world. 

“My dear Delia,” Isabel says softly. “If anyone knows what it is like to lose their son, it is our God.” 

Delia’s lips twist with a sob. Isabel kisses her hairline. She unfurls her handkerchief and dabs prayers in the form of tears collecting on Delia’s chin. Eloise closes her eyes, as if she is stealing a taste of Isabel’s words, in preparation for what may or may not come for the Schofields as well. 

William edges to Jacob, afraid to touch him and also wanting nothing else but to, to hold Jacob fast to this earth and remind him that he can still feel warmth, even after all this. Perhaps Jacob had forgotten this is possible, because when William puts a hand on his shoulder, it begins to quake under his touch, and his face screws in fresh agony. As if William’s touch has broken the curse of numbness, and with the soft touch of friendship also comes the excruciating grief. He grasps William’s hand desperately, and William does nothing but hold on as Jacob sobs. Delia leans her head onto Eloise’s shoulder. Her chest rises and falls heavily with each laborious breath, because the weight of surviving is not easy to bear. 

No one says anything. William knows he cannot imagine the pain that the Wheelers will now be buried in, but he finds his own eyes welling with tears, until he hiccups and has to breathe from his mouth. He weeps for a child that is not his, and yet it breaks him. A love that has always been in the back of his mind when Jacob would come by for a light chat at the pub, or when Nicholas would whistle while he sawed out wood to make for his doghouse, or when Benjamin danced with Ginnie and Tommy from the scratching music of the newly bought jukebox, suddenly rose to the height of mountains until he cannot contain it. 

I love them, William thinks as Jacob’s back arches with sobs. I love them, he thinks as Delia hugs Benjamin’s photo to her chest and whispers, _it is well, with my soul_ until her voice crumbles. I love them, I love them, I love them all--and so he breaks his heart with theirs. 

He does not know how long they stay like this, until finally their tears subside and their breaths match each other’s in pace. William eventually seats himself on the sofa next to Jacob, even though the sofa is not long and he hardly has room. Jacob scoots over to give him space, and he gives William’s hand one last squeeze that says everything. 

All of a sudden, a rumbling stomach breaks the silence. Everyone pauses for a brief second, like burglars caught with the silverware, before Isabel lets out a laugh.

“That’s my cue to check on the oven, isn’t it?” she says. 

“I’m so sorry,” Eloise says, her face reddening deeply. “I think that was me.” 

It certainly was, as William could recognise that rumble from anywhere. But Jacob gives a watery smile and even Delia chokes out a chuckle. 

“You should be in luck,” Isabel says, checking the time on the mantelpiece clock. “The pie ought to be just ready.”

“I couldn’t,” Eloise says hastily. “No, we couldn’t. We have no intention to invite ourselves over for lunch--” 

“Eloise, your company for lunch would mean a great deal,” says Delia. “Besides--” And she wipes her eyes as she smiles. “I’d be a disgrace to send you out the door with a growling stomach like that.” 

Isabel and Eloise laugh. The sound is unexpected, and William realises he does not know what he should expect from a grieving household. If death is enough to squash the remaining life left behind. 

“Then you will excuse me while I help Isabel with the pie,” she says. 

“What, taking it out of the oven?” says Isabel. “I’ll need more help finishing it than anything else, but come along if you want.”

The two women head to the kitchen. Jacob watches their retreating backs, and there is a ghost of a smile still left on his lips. William’s hand is still on his shoulder, and neither of them object to it. 

“You didn’t run over here before you had breakfast, did you?” he asks William. 

William hesitates, which is enough for Jacob to shake his head. 

“Bloody hell, Will,” he says. 

“I saw your shop was closed,” William says apologetically. “I thought--I wanted to see how you were.” 

Jacob sobers. He bobs his head in a defeated nod of sorts, as if to accept his own vulnerability. Delia squeezes his hand--they have not let go of each other since William and Eloise had walked in, since this morning. 

“Thank you, Will,” Jacob says quietly. “Thank you.” 

That momentary smile had already gone away. The three of them sit quietly again, and William struggles with the impulse to say the right thing, to take care of the broken pieces, but he simply does not know what is the best thing to say, if there is such a thing. He is blessedly naive of what a bereaved parent needs, and after wrestling with the need to be helpful he surrenders to the fact that he does not know, and he will not be enough. The Wheelers do not expect him to be. William wonders if they are not the only ones who do not expect him to be invincible. 

In the kitchen, he hears Isabel and Eloise exclaiming over the vegetable pie coming fresh out of the oven. The husky smell of gravy and crust wafts into the room, so enticing that one could almost forgive it for lacking meat. Delia looks towards the window, as if hoping that the smell is enticing enough to draw her youngest son--her last son--back inside. 

“She does have her hand in cooking, doesn’t she?” says William. “Isabel Tatlock.” 

Jacob wipes his nose on his sleeve. 

“Do you remember George’s funeral, Will?” Jacob says. “We were all bloody nervous for her, weren’t we? Her little ones die from the flu right after George comes back home, and then years later, she loses her husband too. Hell, _before_ he died we were worried for her--you remember how George was like after the war? Sometimes we’d hear things next door--”

“Jacob,” Delia says carefully. “Those are her private matters.” 

Jacob nods, humbled. 

“She still lost her husband, and her children,” he says. “Thought that she wouldn’t survive it. Bloody hell, I can’t count the number of times Delia and I would make excuses to check in on her, just to make sure she was still breathing next door. Lost her whole family, that woman.” 

Jacob lets out a shuddering, long sigh. “And now look at her. Twelve years after we buried George, she’s still here, laughing at jokes about pies and looking after us. She came straight here after the telegram--” His voice wavers momentarily. “She came here, and just let us--and then she told us--you will live through this, and I can show you how. She lost everything and twelve years later she’s here, holding our hands.” He looks up to William with the hazel eyes that both his sons inherited, that one son carries on. “Is it possible, then, Will? Listen to them, they’re laughing in the kitchen. Is that still possible, after all this?” 

William feels a tingle run down his back. He cannot imagine a world where he loses Eloise and all three of his children. If he does so much as try, his hands shake, his breath hitches, and ugly, frightening thoughts rise to the surface of his mind. He does not know how it is possible, and yet it must be, because Isabel is cutting slices of pie out onto plates while Eloise gathers forks from the silverware drawer. He wonders who it had been to hold Isabel’s hand, when she buried her children, when she buried her husband, and told her--you can live through this, let me show you how. Life begets life, survival begets survival--to keep going is a learned art. 

He looks down at his own hands, one arthritic with lost callouses and pale skin, the other wooden. He closes one hand into a tender fist. 

When Eloise announces that the pie is ready, William excuses himself to find Nicholas. He makes his way out of the living room towards the door to the garden. The garden has been overturned over the years, bleeding into Isabel’s garden to grow extra vegetables in the midst of the rationing. Nicholas’ Scottish terrier whines by the carrots, tail between its legs. Nicholas’ back is turned towards William as he sits by the newly built doghouse. He is painting the wood with slow, methodical strokes. When the garden door closes behind William, Nicholas turns his head just enough to see who it is, before he continues to paint.

“Nicholas,” William says. “Would you come in for lunch?” 

Nicholas dips his paint brush in the can of red. He streaks it across the roof, until excess dribbles like trimming along the edges. The terrier whines again, walking along the edges of the fence. 

“I’m fine,” Nicholas says. “Thank you.”

He does not bat an eye to the fact that William is at his home at all. He carries on as if it is another morning, so differently from his parents. 

“Mrs Tatlock has made a fine Woolton pie,” says William. “Aren’t you hungry?” 

“I’m not done yet,” he says. 

He moves on to the walls now. The usually hasty boy measures each stroke of paint painstakingly, so that there is not a single line of untouched wood. It is a sturdy doghouse for the terrier, and William wishes that Nicholas’ sense of pride for accomplishing it could have lasted a little longer, even if makes little difference in the end. 

“I’m so sorry about Ben,” William says. 

“Thank you,” Nicholas echoes. 

He withdraws visibly, as if Benjamin’s name is a scalding iron. 

I’ll handle it if you can, William thinks, but who is he that Nicholas would give him that vulnerability? It is not always William’s place to be privy to the broken heart. He will not patch every ripped space. 

William turns around and goes back into the kitchen. When he comes inside, Delia looks up anxiously, and her face visibly falls when she sees him come inside alone. 

“What about Nicky?” she says. “Won’t he eat?” 

“He is painting the doghouse,” says William.

“But he needs to have lunch,” Delia says. Her hands twist the tea cosy in her hand, worrying after the only child she has left to parent. “He’ll go hungry.”

“Wait,” William says. “Please, just a moment.” 

He takes two plates of vegetable pie and a fork each, manages to balance a cup of tea on the plate as well, and returns to the garden. The dog is sitting by Nicholas now, pressed against Nicholas’ side. Nicholas rubs the dog between the ears, using the edge of the scraggly paintbrush to cover every empty space. William approaches Nicholas and sets the lunch down next to him. Nicholas looks to the plate at his side, then looks to William. William crouches next to him, but doesn’t say anything. He takes the other plate of pie and sets it on his lap. 

“You’ve done a wonderful job on this, by the way,” William says. He nods to the doghouse. “You’ve got a better knack on it than Tommy.” 

Nicholas snorts softly. 

“He wouldn’t even mind me saying that,” William says. “He’s good with smaller pieces, like carving out chess pieces and cutting out little boxes, but he doesn’t put things together like this. See here--” 

He bends over and points to the place where the wall of the doghouse meets the roof. 

“Not a gap in sight,” he says. “Often times, if you have just a bit of measurement off, the pieces won’t connect perfectly, and there will be a little gap where it doesn’t fit. You’ve kept it all snug and straight. There won’t be any rain seeping through there for Dexter anytime soon.” 

Nicholas tilts his head as well. He does not say anything, but his gaze follows William’s finger.

“And here,” said William. “You’ve had to sand it down, hadn’t you?” 

Nicholas hums in what William assumes is affirmation. 

“That’s well done,” William says. “Next time, it’ll save you some time to use the sander. It’ll give you a more even finish. Had it taken you a while to do it by hand?” 

Nicholas shrugs. 

“I’ve sold my old belt sander to Mr Dennis down on High Street,” William says. “But he lets me borrow it anytime, if I’m making something on my own. Would you like to use one?” 

“He’ll let me use it?” says Nicholas. 

“Mr Dennis is a generous man,” says William. “And even if he wasn’t, he’s too fond of the Lady of the Lake to not give you a favour in exchange for an extra shot of brandy in his drink.” 

Nicholas smiles wryly. 

“I had wanted to make a table,” he says. 

“What sort of table?” says William.

“I don’t know,” Nicholas says, not entirely honest. “A picnic table, I suppose.”

He takes a bite of the pie without thinking about it. William’s chest lightens. 

“I used to make kitchen tables,” he said. “I think a picnic table is very doable.” 

Nicholas nods, chewing on the flaky crust. He takes his time on the pie, as he takes his time to look William in the eyes, and as he will take his time to look his grief in the eyes. But he takes the first bite, and then takes a second. 

“If you’d like to,” William says, “I’d be happy to help.” 

He waits. Nicholas looks down at his plate. After a moment, William thinks that he will not give an answer, and is about to accept the silence, when Nicholas suddenly speaks up. 

“I’d like to, sometime,” he says. He takes in a deep breath. “Thank you.” 

He says it with surrender, as if he is laying down a heavy load. They do not say much after that, just sitting in the grass and finishing their slices of vegetable pie while Dexter coaxes them for scraps. After a while, Dexter sidles up to Nicholas and licks his face constantly, and it is only then that William realises that he is crying.

He reaches for Nicholas. Nicholas needs a parent’s touch, a friend’s touch, a brother’s, not William’s. All of a sudden William worries that his touch will only offend Nicholas, because it will not be enough. But he is washed over with the longing to love a child in the midst of suffering, for this young boy who will miss his brother for the rest of his life. He touches Nicholas’ elbow gently. Nicholas does not lean into William’s touch. He does not pull away from it, either. 

-

Just before sunset, William walks alone to the River Thames. In the middle of the dinner hours at the Lady of the Lake, he asked Eloise if she could manage for a little bit. She said yes, where are you going? He said, just a walk. Just need to clear my head. 

He is drawn by the never-ending sifting of the currents, brushing along the banks of Reading. It is the part of Reading that hasn’t changed since he was a child; he and Henry Partridge and Oliver Marleigh used to fish here as schoolboys, and soak their feet during the summer months. Forty-three years later, he is the only one left--him and the river. 

He takes off his shoes and socks and rolls up his trousers so that he walks along the grass by the river. There are enough pebbles on the shore to keep his feet from slipping, and yet he remembers how his daughters always managed to find (and fall into) the muddiest part of the banks. He walks until he is tired, which is sooner than he had expected, and he rests against a tree by the river, watching the waters leave him behind as well. It is almost calming.

The Schofields had often picnicked right on this riverside. His daughters would adorn their hair with the wildflowers and chase each other through the mud. Tommy would skip stones to the other side of the river and coax ducks with crumbs. Eloise would stretch out on the picnic blanket next to him and he would mutter poems to her under his breath. George Tatlock would be found dead not far from here, right at dawn. Tommy would hold his father tight after the funeral and beg him--please, Papa, don’t go too. 

Why, God? William thinks. 

If anyone knows what it is like to lose a son, it is our God, Isabel had said.

A surge of burning, painful anger claws through William’s chest. 

He imagines the Passion of the Christ, recalls the haunting imagery of the son of God beaten and broken, covered in his own blood. He thinks of Jesus praying in the garden, so desperate and frightened of his coming death that sweat intermingled with blood poured from his hairline, asking his father if there could be another way where he wouldn’t have to suffer. He thinks of Jesus, suffocating on a cross, crying out to his father-- _why have you forsaken me?_

He pictures his Tommy crawling through the dirt with bloody hands and broken feet, crying for him-- _Papa, Papa, help me, please--_ and helpless, terrified love overflows from his heart. 

How could you, God? William thinks, each breath growing heavier. 

He would do anything to rescue his son from war. He would do anything to protect his children from ever having to see their own blood, anything to make them feel safe at the end of each day, but he can’t. He has never been able to, even without the war. 

God, he thinks, as his breaths hitch in his chest, in your infinity and power, if you are who you say you are, why would you let your son die? 

He thinks of Jesus crawling on his hands and knees, a heavy load on his shoulders as his muscles tremble under the weight. He thinks of the son of God hanging dead, a knife plunged in his torso. William’s own shoulders begin to shake. 

Tell me--William thinks. Why would you not save your only son? 

In the solitude of the evening, with a voice of a soft, rumbling river, William feels the reply in his chest-- _So I could save you._

William takes in a shuddering gasp as if he has been seconds from drowning. He breathes so harshly that the air runs its claws down his throat, and before he knows it, he cannot help but cry out with each exhalation, as if he is a child lost in the woods and cannot find his parents. He puts a hand to his chest, as if that could quiet him, and it only makes him cry out louder, until his eyes are screwed shut and hot tears are spilling down his face. 

Those words are like a touch of life because the moment it crosses William’s mind, the numbness that he has wrapped tightly around him like a suit of armor is lifted, and he feels every tender wound on his soul. He draws his knees to his chest, feeling seven-years-old and so small. He does not know why he is in so much pain. He remembers those words again, the still small voice that answers his impossible question, and a fresh wave of raw emotion drowns him once more. _So I could save you_ , it had whispered to a scarred, desperate man who in his heart of hearts would not want to save himself. 

He buries his face into his knees. He cannot hear the gurgle of the river amidst his own cries. For so many years, ever since he returned from war, he has felt helpless in his insufficiencies. His insufficiencies as a husband, who had lost the means to support his wife and had to rely on her father for employment rather than take care of his own family, who pushed her away when she needed him. His insufficiencies as a father, who failed his children over and over again no matter how hard he tried, who frightened them when they needed security and hurt them when they needed understanding. His insufficiencies as a friend, who let all his companions who loved him die. His insufficiencies as a man, who strangled the life out of a young boy for being in the way. His insufficiencies as a survivor, who is plagued with nightmares for decades, who stumbles as he tries to move on and is too tired to crawl anymore. He looks at his own reflection every morning and is faced with a man who is too close to be a stranger, whom he is tempted to hate for all the ways he has disappointed himself, who is a worthless piece of shit. And the still small voice says to him, so I could save you.

He kneels in the grass, curls into himself so tightly that his forehead touches the cool dirt. He weeps, and this time he allows himself all the time it will take for him to catch his breath on the side of a river. He cries until he hiccups, until his throat is sore, and he feels both too old and too young. He longs to sleep under the dirt. He longs to climb back onto his feet and taste the sun in the sky, to let himself be loved. 

My son’s story did not end at the grave, the wind in the weeping willows replies. 

He closes his eyes, fighting to breathe through the swelling of his throat and the congestion in his nose until bit by bit, he breathes freely. He digs his hand into the grass as if to cling to the earth, until the muscles in his arms shake, until he could even feel the ghost of his left hand pierced by barbed wire hold fast to the equally scarred hand of his saviour. 

William Schofield, says the river, the trees, the steady beat of his heart. Your story will not end at the grave. 

William takes in a deep breath. He smells the summer-soaked grass, the cool mud of the river, the sweat on his own brow. He breathes, breathes, breathes, each inhalation a reminder that he is still here and that he is loved, and that he will continue to be. 

He slowly sits up, when the beating of his heart becomes gentler to bear. He opens his eyes--the dusk makes the river golden-grey, a blushing sky. He gradually releases his grip on the earth, tearing grasses along the way, and when he looks down at his palm, his breath hitches. There are dark red poppies between his fingers. 

_I’m still here._ The crumpled flowers smell sweetly, like fruit. _I’m still right here._

Yes, William thinks. He closes his hand over the flowers, and he dares to be brave. Yes, you are. 

-

The train ride takes most of the morning, and by the time William reaches the train station in Bath he is already sore in his joints. He has never been to this city before, even though comparatively it is not that long of a journey. He has been as far as unmapped France, and he hasn’t even been to Wiltshire. 

Eloise had insisted that he bring along a gift. They had gone back and forth between sugar-lacking biscuits and a bottle of watered whiskey--rationing makes gift-giving a less exciting prospect. William risks his pride and decides on making a small tea chest. Eloise acts as his second hand once more--she has always had a more natural hand at carpentry than she had for needlework. 

William leaves behind his prosthetic. He doesn’t remember the last time he left his own home without his wooden hand. If he had felt naked without the watch he gave Tommy, he feels shivering and vulnerable without that wooden, hollow replacement. 

With the carved box in his pack, he walks out into the city of Bath, following the directions on a neatly written letter that he had received only a week ago. A cheerful neighbour who goes by Cheeseman meets him and takes him along on his vehicle to drive him towards the village just outside of the city, along the River Avon. He chatters endlessly to William during the drive, about the sheep that he herds and a surprising fact about each inhabitant of a cottage that they pass by. William listens to every word, and finds himself smiling at the unfamiliar anecdotes. 

Finally the automobile stops in front of a modest stone cottage, walls adorned with braided ivy. It is not how William had expected it on the way here, and yet it fits perfectly with what he had imagined. William shakes hands with neighbour Cheeseman and takes his bag from the car. He looks to the front door of the cottage and feels a little excited, a little scared, a little ready. 

Something drops on his head. William looks down at the culprit, startled, to see a tiny, overripe cherry spattered on the cobblestone path. He touches the top of his head and feels the drops of juice that had landed in his thinning hair on the way down. He looks up to see a young girl hastily duck behind the limb of the cherry tree, as if her pale green dress and her swinging bare feet are not giveaways. William smiles wryly.

“What was that?” he says indulgently. 

He hears her giggle amongst the leaves. He makes a show of looking around him, around the rose bushes and the even the cabbage garden, before sighing. 

“That was odd,” he says. “What could that have been?” 

The child shimmies further up the tree, delighted in her Puck-like effect. William turns away, towards the front door, when he suddenly hears the kitchen window open. 

“Clara Gwendoline, are you behaving?” says a familiar voice. 

Voices are some of the last to age, and it stuns William to this day how easy it is to recognise it. Even though it has only been a handful of years since they last had a face-to-face conversation, it sends something between a shiver and familiar warmth down his spine. He looks like me, a little older, Blake had said--he should have also said, he sounds like me too, a little deeper. 

“Yes, Granddad!” the child sings from the tree. 

Her grandfather tuts from the windowsill, wisely sceptical. He then turns to William, and his eyes light up with recognition behind a pair of glasses. The uninterrupted joy on his face makes William breathe a little easier.

“Schofield!” he says. “So you’ve made it, haven’t you?” 

“Hello, Joseph,” says William. 

There is flour on Joseph’s hands and dough behind his fingernails. Even though he had tried to wipe it off with a dish towel, there is still soft powder in the lines of his palm as he puts a kettle on for William in the kitchen. The window is kept wide open to welcome in the autumnal breeze; William can hear the sounds of children playing after school and the occasional automobile drive down the road. The village is idyllic; one would be excused for mistaking it as untouched by the war, were it not for the sadness in Joseph’s eyes as he watches his granddaughter swing from the cherry trees outside. 

“She doesn’t understand yet, of course,” Joseph says. “What does a child know about prisoners of war? What she knows is that her father will not be able to write letters home for a while, and that’s hard enough.” 

He sets a cup of tea before William before settling in the kitchen table chair. He looks down at his hands, muttering to himself about the flour before clapping them to dust it off. 

“That must be very difficult,” William says softly. “How has your daughter been?” 

Joseph’s face becomes sombre. 

“She’s so strong, my Ruth,” he says. “She need not be, and yet she is.” 

He picks up the tea chest that William had given him to admire it once more. This simple gesture is more than generous. William is lucky that Joseph had responded to his letters from earlier this summer at all, and continued writing back and forth with him since then, much less that he is sitting in Joseph Blake’s kitchen. 

“Have you heard from Tommy lately?” says Joseph. 

“Last week,” William says. He looks down into the tea, at the swirling bits of leaves settled at the bottom like river sift. “Letter came back very censored. It makes me think that things are changing, and he’s getting moved around--something will happen soon, but who knows what.” 

The anxiety gnaws in his stomach, so he takes in a deep breath and runs his thumb over the thin edge of the china, smells the fragrance of the tea and the September sun. Lifts his gaze to look Joseph in the eye and remind himself of what is beyond his control and imagination. 

“I miss him like hell,” he says. “Every day.” 

Joseph dips his head in acknowledgement. A silence falls between them that is neither uncomfortable nor easy, the two of them too close to be strangers, too far to know what to say or not say next. William braces himself for the inevitable question--he does not know if it would be easier if Joseph asks up front, or if he would have the courage to speak about it himself. 

“How have _you_ been?” says William. “Since--well, since your mother’s passed.” 

Joseph closes his eyes for a moment before sighing. 

“I am taking it one day at a time,” he says. “She lived a good, long life, and I am lucky--but it is never easy, losing family.” 

Joseph would know better than William. The reminder touches tenderly in William’s chest. 

“The house is certainly quieter, which is jarring,” says Joseph, in a lighter tone. “The sheep have been taking advantage of her absence. Sneaking through the garden all the time.” 

“Blasted creatures,” says William with a chuckle. 

“If she knew what they were doing to her roses, she would probably raise herself from the dead to avenge them,” says Joseph. “So--probably a good thing that she is ignorant.” 

He smiles wryly. Outside the window, Clara squeals with a schoolfriend of hers on the swing that Joseph’s son-in-law had strung before he left for the war. 

“While I am glad that she is no longer in pain,” he says, “I _am_ sorry that you never got to meet Mother.”

“Would she have wanted to meet me?” William says baldly.

“I told you, she did not hate you,” says Joseph. “Otherwise, she would not have kept your letters in a box all these years for me to find. I think, if anything, she was afraid to love you.” He pauses before shaking his head. “Oh, that must make no sense, doesn’t it?” 

William does not interrupt, but he does not point out that it makes all the sense to him.

“But your letter had come right after she had passed,” says Joseph, “and honestly, you do not know what it meant to me to be remembered at such a time as that.” 

“I’m sorry that I had not written back in such a long time,” William says. “I should have--”

Joseph raises a hand to stop William. 

“You do not owe me anything,” says Joseph. “You had enough to worry about, with your son being sent to war and your daughter living far from home. Of course you had other priorities during these past years.”

“I do not want to make excuses for myself,” William says. He wraps his hand around the teacup handle, rests the cup against his stump. “I do not have any. I’d like to be your friend, Joseph. But it frightened me to do so.” 

Joseph does not owe him his friendship. He does not owe him anything at all, and neither did William. Instead, he gives it--nervous, shy, but willingly all the same.

“It was easy at first,” William says. “When you first came round Reading, and we would catch up since then. But when the war started-- _this_ war started--all of these old fears came back, and old memories that I thought I had finally gotten over during peacetime. I thought I was slipping backwards, and--when I thought of you, I thought of the past, and I didn’t want to remember it.” 

Joseph raises his eyebrows good-naturedly. 

“I don’t suppose that that stopped you though, did it?” he says. 

“Of course not,” says William. “It seems that many things I’ve done to try to protect myself have done everything but.” 

Joseph hums knowingly, but does not speak. William risks the uneasy question. 

“I am sorry,” he says. “Is it upsetting, my reasoning?” 

Joseph takes his time to answer. 

“I think it makes me sad, yes,” he says. “Since I can’t help that I am from that past too. But you mustn’t sell yourself short either. You were the one who wrote to Mother all these years, even when she didn’t respond. I hadn’t found you for many years either.” He runs a hand over his greyed beard. “Though if you would, Schofield, please remember that I did not stay in the past, either. Remember that you are not the only one who came back. I think it will help.” 

William feels the merciful pang of conviction, reminding him of the blessing of being proven wrong. He would have accepted silence from Joseph when William first sent the letter to reconnect, after that day by the river. Some level of him still twinged with the fear of explicit rejection, and instead Joseph wrote back, answering William’s questions freely and asking some of his own. 

The front door swings open. Clara tramples inside, her dirty feet leaving dirt on the kitchen floor. She scampers to the pantry to search for something to eat without paying a second glance at the two old men at the table.

“Looking for something, Clara?” Joseph says. 

“Haven’t we got any bread left?” she says. “I want to eat some of our jam.” 

“You’ve had more than enough jam this morning,” says Joseph. “Lunch will be soon, could you wait a little longer?” 

“But _how_ much longer?” 

“Not much longer. Here is some bread.” 

He gets up to cut a slice of bread from the breadbox for Clara. Clara stares curiously at William, tilting her head in scrutiny. William smiles at her, and she neither returns it nor looks away. 

“Why haven’t you got another hand?” she says.

“Clara!” Joseph says. 

William turns to face Clara fully. He looks down at the little girl, with her round face and curious eyes. 

“I had gotten hurt very badly during a war years ago,” he says. “I had to cut it off to get better.” 

“I see,” Clara says plainly. “Does it still hurt, or do you feel better now?” 

William considers this. 

“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” he says. “But I had to do some work to make it feel better.” 

“Can I touch it?” she says.

William holds out his stump. Clara runs her small palm over the empty wrist and gives it a satisfied pat. 

“Thank you,” she says. “Do you like cherries?” 

William can’t resist a smile.

“I do,” he says. “I’ve heard your family has many cherry trees, is that true?” 

“Mmhmm,” Clara says. “Thank you, Granddad,” she says when Joseph hands her a plate with a slice of National Loaf. “We get a lot of cherries every summer. We save our sugar to make jam so we can have them even during the winter.” 

“Do you!” William says. “Do you help jam the cherries, then?” 

“Yes!” Clara says between hasty bites of bread. “I help put everything in the jars. Nan had said I could help because I’m big now.”

“You _are_ very big,” says William, feeling a rush of nostalgia. 

“Clara, show Mr Schofield how much you’ve grown,” Joseph says as he prepares lunch for his granddaughter.

Clara nods before hurrying to the doorway of the kitchen, which leads to a dining room. The door frame has several dozens little penknife scratches along the edges, until the door frame looks like the coarse bark of a tree, and she lines herself up against the wall. 

“I’m this tall!” she says. 

“Yes you are!” William says. “Why, you’re almost catching up with this one.” 

He points to a notch right above hers, where someone had written in pen— _Ruth 1920_. Clara’s face brightens.

“That’s Mama!” she says. “And my aunts were shorter than me when she was five.” 

“Your mama and aunts used to be so little!” says William.

“Look here,” says Clara. 

She goes to the other side of the door frame and points. The penknife marks are more worn, the pen that had labelled them fading into the painted wood. 

“That’s Granddad when he was my age,” she whispers. “I’m _taller_ than he was.” 

Indeed she was--there on the wood was the small little nick, where someone had written in faint ink-- _Joe 1892._

“But his brother was taller than me,” she says. “See?” 

On the doorframe, just a hair above Clara’s head, reads _Tom 1903._ Something touches William’s heart. He puts a finger along the cut of the wood, the rough proof of Tom Blake’s life. 

“That is lovely, Clara,” William says softly. “Thank you for showing me.” 

“You’re welcome,” Clara says without thought. She crams the rest of the bread into her mouth. “I’m going to play with Belle now, Granddad.” 

“Be back by noon, all right?” says Joseph. 

“Okay!” sings Clara before she dashes out of the front door again. She must have stopped by the gate to look back, because Joseph waves from the kitchen window.

William tracks Tom’s growth as it creeps up the doorframe, running his finger along the wood. He pictures his friend as a small boy, running around these rooms and squealing from the gardens much like his great-niece is now, eating the last of the summer cherries as he lives and breathes and exists. He doesn’t immediately notice Joseph join him, but eventually senses his presence, and they are quiet at first. 

“I miss him like hell every day,” echoes Joseph. 

A small lump forms in William’s throat. He welcomes it. Twenty-six years does not remove the grief, nor does it beautify it. But he lets love and hope counsel his grief until it can take their hands and walk alongside them instead of alone. 

“I do too,” he says. 

A beat. Several heartbeats, in between. 

“My son was near Ecoust,” he says. “There is a British cemetery there. He tried to look for Tom.” 

Joseph looks at William. They do not say anything at first, and the look on Joseph’s face is unreadable. Then, he gestures for William to follow him out the door and to the back garden, which is flush with autumn vegetable patches and cherry trees retired for the summer. They tiptoe through the cabbages and to one of the cherry trees of the garden. It has grown a handsome height, pruned carefully to keep healthy, and there are younger trees that surround it. While its leaves are now green and mostly fruitless at this point of the year, the grass beneath is littered with its stones, the squirrels and birds having fed happily their fill. 

“Tom’s right here,” Joseph says. 

He points to the trunk of the tree. William leans in closer and holds his breath. Tom’s old identification tag is cupped by the tree’s bark, deeply embedded in the wood as the tree had grown around it, in spite of it, these past twenty-seven years. So embedded it is that William can hardly make it out--the name Blake is just visible before the bark overwhelms the edges. 

“Planted it when I came back home,” Joseph says. “You see these?” 

He points to some of the smaller, shorter trees, which have yet to bear their fruit. 

“Came from this one’s stones,” he says. He gives Tom Blake’s tree a pat. “Gave me a bit of a run for it, actually. You wouldn’t believe how many cherries it drops each year, and then the saplings keep coming up from the pits. My girls’ favourites, this one, growing up. I would tell them that Uncle Tom was spoiling them with sweets every summer.” 

William smiles so widely. He would, wouldn’t he, William thinks to himself. He really would. 

Is that still possible, Jacob Wheeler had asked, after all this? William wants Joseph to come back to Reading with him, so he can take Nicholas Wheeler’s hand and say, yes. It is. 

He wipes his eyes before he can admit to himself that they are teary. Joseph, who understands, wipes his nose on his sleeve. 

“It’s been a long many years for you, hasn’t it, Schofield?” he says. 

William swallows hard. 

“Yes,” he says. “I suppose it has. And you?”

“Of course it has,” Joseph says. “But perhaps it gave me time.”

“Time?”

“To think. To learn. To stop myself from going towards a very terrible fall.”

“Tell me more,” William says.

Joseph chuckles. He lowers himself on the ground, with a small _oof_ as he leans against the trunk of Tom’s tree. He pats the ground next to him, and William sits beside him. The air is sweet with the last of its fruit. 

“As long as you will too,” Joseph says.

And so they do. 

-

On the train ride back to Reading, William holds a blank sheet of paper and a pen and thinks about his son.

He thinks about his indecipherable, endless galaxy of a boy whose letters home only skim the surface of him. About that earnest, precious spirit who sweats and toils under a weary war. He thinks of Tommy, whom he had tried to shape into his own image of strength, his son who may repeat his father’s mistakes and try to be invulnerable. 

“I know that it's already been so hard on them,” William had said in the Blakes’ garden. “I’m afraid to burden my family.” 

“Oh, come on, Schofield,” said Joseph. “Don’t be a martyr. Love is not supposed to be easy, war or not. It’s commitment, a choice that they decide on their own. It’s a blessing. Do not deprive others the opportunity to love you. It will be your turn to love them in due time in their worst moments, too.” 

He balances the pen in his hand, watching the English pastures pass him by through the window. It does not escape him that for all he knows, this could be the last letter that his son receives. But if it means for his son to know him, and if it opens the doors for his son to take that risk of being known, would it be worth it? How simple it is to be a little more known--to write phrases like _this has been difficult_ , or _I am scared_ , or _I’m sorry._ And how frightening it is to write these little words that slowly shed his own armor and reveal the human being that he is. 

He smooths the paper on the table of his train compartment. When the pen touches the paper, he takes in a deep breath. 

_My dear Tommy,_ he begins. 

There are only so many sheets of paper that Joseph had given him for the train ride back, and so many words in the English language to love and be loved by his child. He writes about the storms, the ones that will still make his heart jump from the first clap of thunder. He writes about the storms that do end up being exactly what he fears--there is always the possibility that that terrible thing you dread will be the truth. But it is not the sort of truth that lasts. Tom Blake is dead, and yet his love begets love, and his family rests in the shade of his memory. Eloise nearly died, but now she wipes away her friend’s tears and makes her smile. Ginnie tends to dying soldiers and cries on her walk home for her friends, and still comes home to kiss him on the cheek. Edith had lived through the anxiety of bombs for endless nights, and sang at the top of her lungs on her wedding day. Tommy has the war deeply embedded in his heart and head, but he still writes home. And William--

William is afraid. He grieves, he shouts, he trembles. But he wakes up each day, and takes none of it for granted. He stumbles and falls, and yet still moves forward. They will not stay the same. Their stories will not end at the grave. 

The train rumbles towards Reading, leaving behind the setting sun, and William Schofield lets himself be saved. 

-

Ginnie has put it upon herself to be in charge of the jukebox. She is particularly proud of her music taste--the jukebox belts Bing Crosby and Duke Ellington until even the brass of the sconces seem to be playing alongside the trombones. Frank Sinatra’s records take up the majority of the Rock-Ola that the singer might as well sponsor their jukebox.

“The war may have watered down our beer,” she says. “But they very well can’t ration music.” 

She taps her feet to the songs as she prepares drink, the soles of her shoes scuffing the floorboards gummy with spilt alcohol until each step she takes sounds like the floor is smacking its lips. She sings the lyrics that she knows, not so much under her breath as it is incredibly over it, and she moves to its beat--pauses in the middle of wiping a glass if her speed doesn’t quite match that of Ella Fitzgerald’s, and sliding her heel across the floor as she sweeps. If anyone stares at her disapprovingly, she does not care to notice it. She has grieved more than her share of old friends. She works twelve hours at Battle Hospital per shift, mopping up the blood of dying boys, before promptly coming back home to fill the pints of their drunken fathers. She can’t give a damn what they think of her. 

William does not realise how much of a constant his daughter is. Save for the weekends she will take off to visit Edith and her baby nephew, Ginnie returns home every night. Exhausted, hungry, sometimes short-tempered, sometimes melancholy, but she returns. There is always a light shining from underneath her bedroom door. 

One evening, she returns home earlier than usual. It is a Sunday, so William is home too, reading in the living room while Eloise duels her needles to make a hat for Edith’s newborn son in the bedroom. He hears the door open and close. Ginnie takes off her kitten heels to massage her feet at the kitchen table. 

“Hello, sweetheart,” William calls out. “Are you hungry?”

Ginnie doesn’t answer. Instead, she comes into the living room. She looks him in the eyes, but her fingers fidget with each other absentmindedly. 

“May I speak with you?” she says. 

William immediately sets his book aside. Ginnie sits on the sofa next to him. Her jaw is sternly set--William does not know what to name it other than anticipation. 

“What is it?” he says. 

Ginnie takes in a deep breath. Her sharp shoulders brace for her announcement. 

“I have orders to go to Portsmouth,” says Ginnie. “I need to leave in three days.” 

William searches her face, at the same time that he is searching himself for a response. Something pricks him deeply in his chest. He doesn’t know what to name it. It is only partly familiar.

“Portsmouth?” he says. “Why Portsmouth?”

“I don’t know,” Ginnie says. “I don’t know if that’s my final destination. I might--well, they might put me out on the ships and send me elsewhere from there. Of course, they can’t tell me. But it will be for the war--I’ll go to take care of the boys.”

She does not stop, his daughter. Childhood dies violently before her--she wipes the sweat from her brow and the tears from her face and plunges headfirst into the fight anyway. The number of old friends whom she hopes she can save dwindles, and she does not look away. 

“Are you part of the mobile unit, Ginnie?” he says. 

Ginnie bites her lips and nods. William takes in a sharp breath. The VAD could send his daughter all the way to the other side of the world. They could put her on a ship--she has never been out to sea before!--and she would follow.

“They could send you to Italy,” he says faintly. That is where Ben Wheeler died. “Or Singapore.” That is where Ollie Peterson died. “Even back to France.” That is where Lee Moore died. 

“Or they could have me stay at Portsmouth,” Ginnie says. She takes her father’s hand. “I don’t know. But they need me to go, Dad.”

William squeezes Ginnie’s hand. He puts his stump over it, to clasp it protectively. He doesn’t want to let go--he is afraid to let go. That much cannot change so easily. Ginnie is holding her breath--he can see in her gaze that she is preparing herself for any sort of response that William may give, if he may fight, if he may protest or beg, if he may tell Ginnie that she cannot go, he will not allow her to leave his protection. A small part of him instinctively wants to. 

Instead, he bows his head. 

“Yes,” he says. “They do. Because you are a good nurse, Ginnie. You’ve done so well.” 

Ginnie’s hand tightens around his. When William lifts his face to hers, he sees that her eyes are shining. 

“Are you frightened?” he says. 

She hesitates. An easy assurance, the answer that she thinks William wants to hear, is at the tip of her tongue. 

“Yes,” she says instead. “I am.” 

William runs his thumb over her knuckles. There was once upon a time when he could cradle the entirety of her in his arms. Now, she is so _much_. He cannot fathom how proud he is of her. He presses his lips into a bracing smile.

“I am too,” he says. 

He opens his mouth to say more, but finds himself speechless. Three days is so soon--it may not be enough time to get all the sugar and flour that they need to make biscuits for her before she goes. And there is no saying how long she will be gone--months, a year, until the end of this war. He misses her before he takes his eyes off of her. 

“Dad,” Ginnie says, and her voice catches. Worry tightens in her tone. She holds onto him tightly, as if he will be the one to leave. 

“It’ll be okay,” William says. “Your mother and I will wait for you. We’ll pray for you, love.”

He is afraid--of course he is afraid. He does not know where his child will go, and neither does she. She may stay in Portsmouth--or she may be sent all the way to the Pacific. She may save the life of her brother--she may be torpedoed and buried in the sea. She may see things that she will never, ever forget. For the sake of her neighbours, her brothers, her friends, she will go forth to where there be dragons, the great and terrifying unknown that William cannot counsel her or protect her from. 

He loves his daughter, his children--and he cannot save them. He does not have to. Someone already has. 

“ _What seas what shores what grey rocks and what islands,”_ William murmurs. “ _What water lapping the bow, And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog.”_

Although he does not ask it of her, Ginnie leans her head against his shoulder. She fits neatly in the crook of his neck, like she used to. William wraps his arm around her shoulders and draws her close. He closes his eyes, taking in this moment with his daughter on the last days she has at home before she too will be gone. 

“ _What images return,_ ” William says. He closes his eyes. “O, my daughter.”

-

They walk to the train station to say goodbye to their last child. The night before Ginnie has to leave, William and Eloise stay up all night. Ginnie stays up with them. They sit at the kitchen table, the three of them, drinking some of their own alcohol reserves and talking about anything and everything. Ginnie promises to write letters, but they all know better. Their daughter talks with her hands, and her voice swells and speeds up whenever she is passionate. That is what they will miss the most, so they stay up until there is no more cider to spare and listen to Ginnie laugh and ramble. William gathers the sound of her voice into his chest and closes the door, lets it reverberate in his chest like a second heartbeat. 

Ginnie walks between her parents. It is rare to see her nervous, but she fiddles with the handle of her carpetbag and keeps straightening her uniform as if there is reason to stall. William had expected more time waiting with his daughter, to assure her that they will be all right, and so will she. But of all days, today the train is on time. 

Ginnie hurries to board with her ticket and nearly forgets one of her carpetbags. Eloise shoves the carpetbag through the door just before the conductor barks that everyone take a seat, now. Ginnie barely makes it to a window to wave goodbye before the train takes off. William tries to jog by the window to make their goodbye last longer, but it is not long before the train overtakes him, and she is gone. 

The train station is quiet now that they are left behind. William returns to Eloise’s side. She looks after the steadily retreating train, as if she can still see Ginnie settling into one of the seats from here, taking in a deep breath and pulling on a brave smile. William puts a hand on her elbow. She breathes in deeply, breathes out, and looks him in the eyes. He holds her gaze, and that is exactly what she needs in that moment. 

They walk arm in arm back home. The morning is still young, so there are few people on the street. They stall their return home--stop by the church to pray for their children, stop by the Wheelers for a quick chat, stop by the bakers to see if there are any loaves left. But eventually distractions come to an end, and they return to their empty home.

When William closes the flat door behind him and turns around, he sees Eloise standing in the middle of the living room. Her hands are over her heart. It is silent save for the ticking mantelpiece clock, and the occasional drip from the kitchen tap. The bedroom doors are left open--Tommy’s and Ginnie’s room are neat and cold. Their home has never been this quiet. 

Eloise drags her wrist across her eyes. She cried the day that Tommy left, and cried as Edith walked down the aisle. Today her lips tremble for Ginnie, and for themselves. The war has taken all of their children away; they can only wait for the war to give them back. Their home has never felt this alone.

William takes Eloise’s hand. She immediately interlocks her fingers with his. They will venture towards dragons of their own, here at home. They will face them together. 

“I’m here,” he says.

She squeezes his hand. I know you are, says her warm touch. I know. 

-

_5 June 1944_

_Dear Dad,_

_I ought to be sleeping now, but when I try I just think of you instead. It’s hard not to, at any given time._

_Tonight, though, I miss home all the more fiercely. I want my family. I imagine you feel the same, especially now that Ginnie is away. How are you and Mum keeping? Is it too quiet in the flat without her? We all will have to hold on a little longer. And I know you will, even if there are days when you can’t. I know that this is hard for you and Mum too. It’s hard as hell, but if you hold on, then so will I._

_I will have to be very brave soon, which is not always easy to do. Sometimes, when I think of home, it makes me feel a coward instead. I’m more scared than tired. But I miss you more than I am scared. I’ll go through whatever I must to get back home, even if it will be hell and back._

_And if you were able to come back, Dad, then so can I. It wasn’t easy for you. It isn’t. Therefore it is not impossible. If I come back, I know that it will be on my knees. I used to be afraid that if it had to be on my knees, then I must be doomed. I won’t be strong enough to make it back at all. But you show me that coming back means bleeding, means stumbling and taking someone’s hand to pull you back up, losing your way and being led back onto the right path. It means making mistakes and doing the wrong thing and learning what the right thing is. It means being afraid of heights and climbing those mountains anyway. And I’m so proud of you._

_I won’t be able to write often after this. It may be a long while until I hear from you again, or you hear from me. But know that I love you all, more than there are stars in the sky. Even then it's not enough._

_Love,_

_Tommy_


End file.
